By Any Other Name
by Tacens
Summary: Deacon's got a mark. Wanderer's got a mark. For a smart guy, sometimes Deacon can't put two and two together.
1. Chapter 1

_Elsinore_.

In pretty, careful cursive, the name was burned upon his skin, in a brilliant peacock blue, from the day he was born.

 _Elsinore Annabeth Woodhull._

John's luckier than most in that sense. Sometimes it's only one name, or even just a letter, or a symbol. But three full names? In the old days, that would've been more than enough to find your match; there were records and databases and services just for this purpose. And, well, with a name like 'John'? At least one of them would have a chance of picking out the other.

That he was born with the name already upon him meant that John's soulmate was older than him, that she was already out there somewhere, waiting for him. It wasn't that uncommon, but his family, his friends, teased him anyways. "You like the older ladies, eh?" "Watch out for those cougars - they'll chew you up."

He took it in stride. In the post-war world, finding your mate was a pleasant surprise, but not something you should ever really hope for. They say the world used to shrink every day, but now, the bombs had blown it wide open once more. Most folks won't travel 30 miles from the place they were born their entire lives. Finding your mate was a near impossibility, but that didn't stop the flights of fancy. Everyone with a mark hoped that they were special, that despite all odds, somehow their mate would stumble into their lives.

It was around adolescence - puberty and whatnot - that the Bond should start to form. A mild telepathic link between mates, the Bond bled emotions from mate to the other. Floods of hope, fear, joy, and sadness would echo between them.

John waited years to feel the first waves from the Bond. He imagined it as a wash of cool water down his spine, a warm glow within his stomach. When his marked playmates began to brag about the tingles of excitement, joy and even sadness they felt, he simply supposed his mate was just a very calm, collected woman: a no-nonsense gal who didn't let flighty feelings control her.

Sometimes, when alone, he spoke to her, told her about himself as best he could. The Bond didn't work that way, but maybe it would help. _Elsinore. Elsie. Ellie. Elle._ He had a thousand little nicknames for her. He tried to send her feelings of happiness, feelers that he hoped would bounce back to him.

But there was nothing but silence. Only ever cold, disappointing, silence.

As he grew to an age where his parents could no longer protect him from the harsh realities of the world, John came to the realization that there was a simpler explanation for her silence. That maybe she wasn't just the strong, silent type: maybe she was dead.

It happened sometimes - an ugly affair. A mate would die when the other was so young that they could not understand the hole being carved out of their souls, their infant screams of heartbreak mistaken for colic. In a Wasteland boiled in radiation and overflowing with terrors, it was just another sad part of the human story.

So, the boy lived a full life without his mate. Went off on his own. Made mistakes. Fell in with the wrong crowd. Did horrible things - really, really horrible things. Somehow found love, redemption, hope, and then lost it all again. But through it all, the Bond was silent. His mate was gone.

And then, one very ordinary day, without sign or warning, the Bond came screaming to life. The man, who now called himself Deacon, doubled over in pain. A wave of panic and fear and _anger_ flooded down the link and crashed in upon him. He clutched at the rusted metal storm drain to keep himself from toppling over.

"You alright there, Deacon?" Desdemona ached an eyebrow and puffed at her cigarette, the closest thing to concern she would show.

He wheezed for a moment, gasping as he tried to block the emotions screaming from his mate. "Yeah, yeah, I'm good," he lied, as he always lied. "Just some bad bloatfly, you know how it is."

"Sure," Des yawned, knowing Deacon well enough to not believe any of it, and carried on without him.

It took a moment before Deacon could stand. He did his best to push down the well of his mate's emotions that rose up from his stomach and into his throat. For a moment, he had no idea what to do; he had wasted much of his youth waiting for his mate, and now what? After a lifetime of ignoring him, she was just going to come screaming into his life, demanding attention he couldn't spare?

Nope. Nope. Nope. Deacon had no time for that.

With a deep breath and a shaking hand through his hair, he pushed down the Bond until it was silent once more. He built up a wall, and shut her out for good. Then, he straightened, adjusted his sunglasses, and, as though nothing at all had happened, followed Des into the Switchboard.

 _Elsinore._

* * *

Deacon would always wonder if it was his distraction that night that led to the fall of the Switchboard. Were they followed? Was it his carelessness that led the Institute into their home? Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, Deacon knew that it could never happen again.

Enough time passed that Deacon managed to convince himself that he had forgotten about his mate. Yep. He didn't think about her at all. Never. Not ever. Certainly not when he was alone in some dark hole at night. Not once in those cold early dawn moments, when a package had been lost and sleep eluded him. He definitely never ran his fingers over the slightly discoloured patched on his forearm where, every few years, Carrington lasered-off the stubbornly reforming letters. Nope nope nope.

Honestly, it was better this way. What sort of life could he offer a mate, anyways? Deacon would never leave the Railroad, and so they would be a constant liability to each other. If Fate somehow brought them together, Deacon was quite certain they would both be dead within the year. Even then, if he did find her and they somehow managed to elude the sea of Institute Coursers on their ass, what sort of bastard would he be to forget about Barbara's memory? Deacon was scum, he knew that well enough. One good thing in his life had already been much more than he ever deserved. But two? That was some karmatic debt he wasn't willing to sign-off on.

So, Deacon did everything he could to push Elsinore out of his mind. He let her be just some lady, probably on the other side of the earth, that could live her own life, do her own thing, make her own mistakes. He wished her the best, and then, he wished her away.

And then, just when he needed it most, a pleasant distraction crawled out of Vault 111 and into his life.

She showed up in the old church basement one night, mismatched armor strapped over a vault suit, dirty infantry helmet covering her dark hair, a pair of broad sunglasses hiding her eyes: a woman after his own heart. She was fire and fury and ready to burn the Institute down in rain of nuclear glory.

Oh yeah. They hit it off.

It was easy with her. She was a widow looking for her stolen son, and yeah, she had some skeletons she was trying to keep from chattering too loudly in her closet. Deacon _gets_ her.

It helped that he'd literally read the book on her. When she first starting making waves in the Commonwealth, he had wandered up to Sanctuary in his best Caravanner disguise and nosed around a bit. In that big, creepy vault, he managed to get a terminal working and took a gander at the Vault-Tec records of one Nora Byron, née Bennet. She was some big-shot lawyer from before the war, who gave it all up to marry a good ol'soldier boy, play house, and change nappies.

Honestly, her file wasn't all that thick. Vault-Tec was mostly interested in her husband and his ol' ball-and-chain just happened to get a free ticket to Freezerville as the "Plus-One".

He took her on a test run through the Switchboard, half expecting the rumours about her to be inflated. No way someone was that good.

But yeah, she's _that good_. She's a crackshot shot with a pistol and she moves through a firefight so quickly and gracefully he has to wonder if she's dancing. From her file, Deacon knew she did some standard pre-military training in her youth. With the world on the edge of war, everyone had to be ready. Now, 200 years later, she was finally putting that training to damn good use.

And just like that, she was sterling in Deacon's books. Together, they headed out to Fort Hagen to take another look around Kellogg's old hideout. To their utter lack of surprise, the place was cleaned out; only a pair of spent fusion cell gave any sign that the Institute was ever there. It's a shame Wanderer hadn't come to the Railroad sooner.

So now, on the way back to HQ, they were camped out on the eighth floor of some anonymous office building. At a tiny cookfire, Deacon heated a couple radroach legs and a can of beans, poking at them now and then with a bent length of rebar.

From behind his sunglasses, he watched his new partner. She wandered about the room, picking at the ancient piles of office trash. That was her thing: she never stopped. Even in the down times, during the rest breaks and between the missions, she was always busy, always doing something _._ In their line of work, being so damn _busy_ was a liability. It made you stand-out. It made you memorable. Yeah, Deacon was always watching, always on high alert, but he never let it show. From the other side of his dark glasses, he looked cooler than an Atom Cat.

For all his flaws, Deacon was a damn good spy. Even if he wasn't, he still could have figured out why it was that she was pocketing a handful of old fuses and quietly prying a rusty spring from a broken clipboard: Nora didn't just help synths, she helped everyone. She had maybe ten caps to her name, but she would gladly give them to the first sad soul they came across. It had been only months since she fell out the freezer and she'd already built a dozen settlements with the Minutemen. It didn't make her rich. It didn't make her life easier. It didn't help her find her son. But she did anyways. There was a goodness in her that had long washed out of the Commonwealth. Maybe it was just pure naivety, but it was something that Deacon found himself drawn to. Something he'd been drawn to before.

With a few rapid blinks, Deacon shook those thoughts away. He cleared his throat as he moved on to find a new distraction.

"Hey, Wanderer? ... Wander _er?_ Wan-der-errrrr," he groaned. "It's sooo long. Way too long. I've got important things to do: synths to rescue, Commonwealths to save - I don't have time for a name that long."

Nora rolled her eyes and kept digging through her latest mountain of trash.

"Wanda," Deacon announced at last. "I'm gonna call you Wanda."

"Really?" she groaned, standing and making a wasted effort to brush the dust from her vault suit. "Agent Wanda? 'Codename: Wanda'? "

Deacon shrugged. "Don't like it? Shoulda picked a shorter codename."

That earned him a wrinkled nose. "What? No, Desdemona picked it, I just wanted to be Nora."

"Still your own fault – you could have picked anything. Coulda been something kick-ass like 'Vengeance' or 'Fixer'. Or maybe something sexy like 'Charmer' or, _ooooh_ , 'Whisper' or something."

With a sigh, she gave up on the scavenging and came to sit next to him at the fire side. "Seriously Deacon, can't I just be Nora? Please?"

"Nope, you're Wanda now."

She gave him a sour look which he, in turn, rebuffed. Tut, tut, Wanderer, keep those emotions in check.

"Look, Wanda, codenames are important. Keeps you - your whole life - safe from the Brotherhood and the Institute and your average Commonwealth asshole. It's the only shield we've got against them."

She shook her head as she scoffed. "Why? What could they possibly do - kill my husband and steal my son?"

And just like that, the game drained away. He had no answer for that.

Deacon had been with the Railroad a long time. He understood loss. He had _lived_ loss. These days, he could see the everyday tragedies of the post-war world and let it wash off of him. But seeing that look of heartbreak flash across Nora's eyes was different. There was something there. Something he can't name, but was kicking up the cobwebs long gathered in that empty place in his chest. He felt her hurt.

His words were careful when he spoke. "Look, you've got a new family now. All those folks up in Sanctuary, they need General Nora Byron and Agent Wanderer to be two separate people. When we're running missions, you've gotta stop using your real name, and you've gotta stop wearing that vault suit. You need to blend in, be forgettable."

But that was the problem, wasn't it? More and more often, Deacon got the feeling that no matter what she did, no matter what she wore, she couldn't possibly ever be forgettable, that he would carry her in his thoughts even when they parted. For now, Deacon managed to shake off the feeling, packed it up and filed it under "Do Not Open".

Across the fire, he watched her weigh his words. Bringing the settlements into it had been a harsh but necessary reminder, and, from the way her shoulders drooped in guilt, she took the message to heart. Eventually, she gave a silent nod of acceptance.

Deacon gave a mental checkmark of approval. With a little time and a little guidance, she was going to be a damn fine Heavy.

He knocked his shoulder against hers in a sad attempt to lighten the mood. "So just like, shut up, eat your radroach, and be Wanda, okay pal?"

And so she was.

At least for a little while.

* * *

 **AN:** Let's be honest here, Wanderer is a super cool spy name, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

They were headed north to Malden, taking the scenic route along the coastline. It had been a quiet trek so far; Nora was unusually silent following their meeting with Amari, and it didn't take much to see that the cause of her conflict was H2-22.

It was a problem most new agents had: getting too attached to the packages. That H2-22 had changed from a sweet, soft-spoken, timid little man, into your typical pushy, boorish Wealther had been a hard pill for Nora to swallow. Deacon remembered the way she had sat next to the synth in the old church, holding his hand, and promising to do everything she could to keep him safe. It was hard to ignore her sincerity, her compassion.

He'd been the same way when he first joined. It had seemed cruel to strip the synths of their memories, their personalities, and then just download some new identity into the shell. But eventually, Deacon had come to understand the necessity and the mercy in it. It gave them a chance to live a life without fear. It gave them a chance to be free. Nora would get there soon enough.

On the far side of the Charleston Bridge, Deacon whistled to Nora and with a tilt of his head, motioned towards the bank. She nodded in reply.

Together, they sat on the hood of a rusted old car. Nora cracked a can of water, which they passed back and forth. It was part of what made working with Wanderer so damn easy: they were synched-up. Deacon barely had to say two words and she knew exactly what he meant. A single nod, a slight cough, a quick flick of his eyes, that was all it took, and she was right there with him.

Deacon took another sip, leaning back to gaze up at the rusting city skyline across the river. He'd seen that sight a thousand times, but it was still something to behold when he managed to step out and look in. Those tall towers stretching off into the clouds, they must have been a hell of thing to see before neglect and age wore them down. He could imagine the scene overlaid with the past: the shining skyscrapers, the brightly painted cars, the bustle of life that the city once held.

Nora caught his eye. Even the black shields of his sunglasses couldn't hide that slight twinge of wonder.

"Sure it looks nice now. But with three miles of traffic in gridlock and a few hundred blaring car horns? It was a bit less majestic." Still, she shook her head at her old life, when a delayed commute was the worst part of her day. " _The remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were,"_ she sighed.

"Proust," Deacon didn't realize he had uttered the words aloud until she laughed in reply.

She hopped off the car, bent backwards in a stretch, and then shrugged. "Before Law School, I did a BA in early 20th-Century literature."

As she wandered down towards the water's edge, Deacon found himself jealous of the age. She had planned her life around reading books - no worries about food or shelter or survival - just books.

"I mean, sure, _Ulysses_ isn't required-reading for shooting piece-of-shit pistols made of old pipes and duct tape, but it helps." She gestured to the fetid waters below. " _The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea,_ " she intoned. The crack of her pistol filled the air as a mireluk in the distance toppled over. She winked at Deacon. "See? Four years and a mountain of debt? Worth it."

The way she smirked, with the breeze in her hair and a low pink sunset behind her, that would do something to most men. And those tight jeans hugging the curve of her ass, that would certainly be a distraction to your Average Joe. But not to Deacon. Nope. He barely even noticed the rose-tinted flush over her cheeks or the way her eyes seemed to sparkle with mischief. He could easily ignore her fond smile as she quoted so easily from his favourite books. He was completely and utterly immune to her charms.

He stood, glanced towards the road, and together, in silence, they set off.

They stopped at Taffington before taking on Malden. Deacon preferred to keep a distance from the smaller settlements, where the community was tight-knit enough that outsiders were noted, and worse, remembered. But, like it or not, there was safety to be had in numbers and so the security gained in spending the night in Taffington was worth the risk of standing out.

There was a bit of a garden, but Taffington was mostly a trading post. An inn and a doctor were enough to bring in traffic from Beacon Hill and Goodneighbour, and to keep the settlement afloat. The inn-keeper ran a bar during the evenings for as long as she had patience and the patrons have caps. It wasn't much more than a dirty countertop, some benched tables, and a scattering of fire barrels beneath the stars, but tonight it was enough to draw in the inhabitants, locals and visitors alike.

Most importantly, Taffington was a Minutemen settlement, one that Nora had help to build. She knew each of the traders and their families, had built their homes and dug their wells. Normally when Nora visited, the residents would flock around General Byron, urging her to join their dinner and share news from around the Commonwealth.

But not tonight. Tonight, Nora was with the Railroad. Tonight, she had to be Wanderer. So, that was the evening's training mission that Deacon had set for his partner: spend the night among the locals and not get recognized.

It surprised Deacon, but she'd done well so far. Dressed in a flannel shirt and torn canvas pants, and with dark glasses to hide her eyes, the settlers treated her as just another anonymous trader on her way from _Who-Knows-Where_ to _Never-Heard-Of-It_. It was as Deacon had once suspected: when the settlers saw General Byron, they really saw the dog, vault suit, the Pip-Boy.

They were posing as a couple on their way to meet up with some family near Tenpines. It was a play Deacon had done a few times with Songbird and Maven, back before the Switchboard fell. Being a couple just made it easier; a man and wife seemed settled, harmless, like 'good people'. It made them safe and forgettable, and explained why they appeared at the same time and preferred to share rooms - that was another trick of the trade, when you're on a mission, having to constantly watch your back, shared rooms and sleeping in shifts were a must.

It was getting late when Deacon headed to the bar to meet up with Nora. The settlement's children had drifted to bed, and only a couple of travelers and a handful of locals gathered beneath the strings of faded Christmas lights. Most of the patrons crowded near the bar top, listening to Ella Fitzgerald belt a sad song through the radio, but Nora sat alone in the corner, an old book and a cloudy glass her only company.

Deacon watched her from the shadows. She scratched at where her hair was carefully tucked beneath a cap to give it the appearance of being close-cropped. She'd done a fair job at the illusion, but it was a far cry from a wig - Deacon was still working on converting her to those.

Grabbing a beer, and tipping the barkeep just enough to earn some goodwill but not enough to be memorable, Deacon dropped into the bench beside Nora, letting his arm settle over her shoulders - like, you know, something normal couples did. He was just doing normal married-folk things. Yep. Totally. And the way she curled into his side, letting her head rest against his shoulder? That was just some A+ acting there by his new partner.

Playing the part, Deacon drank his beer in silence, watching the slow trickle of patrons out of the bar. The song on the radio changed to a lively jazz number. At his side, Nora read on, her fingers flipping too quickly through the pages. Her warmth seeped in through his side.

"Wanda, Wanda, Wanda, you've gotta slow down, pal," he scolded her. "You can't just blow through a book as fast as you can turn the pages. It could be weeks before you find another. You've gotta savour them."

She gave Deacon a pinched look as she held up the trashy paperback to the light. On the cover, a pair of teenage boys in pressed white shirts and hemmed trousers peered with their flashlights into a dark cavern. Deacon recognized the novel from HQ; the ratty old mystery had been sitting on a shelf next to the Cram for months now, collecting dust. "What? _The Mercer Bros Detective Agency and the Shadowed Claw_ not good enough for you? How dare you, Wanda? That's a classic!"

"Sure," she drawled. "Right. You've gotta have the classics: Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Homer, and... " She flipped the cover around to read the name. "- and Chuck Bergins."

He snorted a laugh in reply.

"Come'on Deacon, this isn't exactly high literature here. Besides, it's your fault. You keep promising to read _War and Peace_ to me, but never actually deliver. I've got to choke down whatever junk I can find."

" ** _Threaten_** to read _War and Peace_ **_at_** you," he corrected.

"Nah, what I wouldn't give to hear about Peety and those crazy kids again," she sighed, sounding just a little wistful. "I always fancied myself a bit of a Natasha. Instead, all I have is _Mercer Bros_ and these..."

As she bent down to grab the sack at her feet, Deacon's arm slid away from her shoulders. He assured himself that he did not miss the contact in the slightest. After a moment, Nora returned, holding up a trio of paperbacks. All the covers featured buxom young damsels clinging to opened-shirt swashbucklers.

An arched eyebrow appeared over the rims of Deacon's sunglasses.

Nora huffed in reply. "Yeah, I know. Tom gave them to me."

"... _Tinker_ Tom?"

"Tinker Tom."

"Yikes."

"Yep."

With that, she tucked the three books away, and settled so easily back beneath Deacon's arm once more. "I know I shouldn't speed through them," she admitted. "It's just a bad habit from college. They made us read _Bleak House_ , _Moby-_ Dick, AND _Anna Karenina_ one semester. I thought my eyes were going to fall out," she complained.

"Pfft. Tell me about it. They used to make us have these death matches in the library. Everyone was fighting with rulers and protractors and stuff, last one alive got an A. And they'd make us wrestle deathclaws for bio class, and if you couldn't get it under the microscope? Automatic failure. Then it was up all night building fusion reactors and nothing but over-cooked mireluck casserole in the caf, and don't even get me started on the child sacrifices at the pep rallies ... and that's totally what college was like, right?"

She grinned back at him. "Yep. Spot on."

With that, they returned to their easy silence - it was always easy with her. Nora went back to leafing through _Mercer Bros,_ while Deacon leaned further back into his chair, with one hand taking short sips of his beer and the other toying with the frayed patch at Nora's shoulder. Just another normal couple, doing normal boring couple things.

Deacon took the time get reacquainted with the other late-night drinkers. Hunched at the bar were two young men, probably brothers. Their voices were drowned beneath the radio and the general din, but now and then they sniggered, slapping one another on the back. Deacon filed them under "Mostly Harmless" but with an appended note of "Could Escalate Really Damn Quickly". Next was a trio of middle-aged women crowded about a makeshift table. Deacon hid his smirk as they scoffed and complained about their useless husbands. A few seats away was a lone old man, his cap pulled low over his brow. He would have earned a "Pretty Damn Suspicious" note from Deacon had the barkeep not waved so easily at the old-timer as he wandered in.

And then, in the far corner, as though mirroring himself and Nora, a young couple sat apart from the crowd. The young man's fingers trailed over the letters curving around his lover's neck. Hers fluttered over the ones upon his wrist. From the way they kept touching each other's marks, it was obvious they were mates. Even across the dim bar, through the noise and the smoke, Deacon could sense the connection between them - something emotional and spiritual that tied the couple together in ways unmated lovers would never truly understand. There were a dozen or so people milling about in the noisy bar, but for the lovers, the world shrunk down to just the two them.

It was only then that Deacon noticed that the sound of turning pages had ceased. Glancing back to Nora, he found her staring wide-eyed at the mates. Her lips were slightly parted in an "O" of surprise. Her book lay forgotten upon the table.

"Don't stare," he warned beneath his breath. "Staring gets you noticed."

He felt her jump. Nora dropped her gaze back into her book, chastened. "Sorry."

Deacon gave a slight nod. He understood - he'd been there once too - but she had to grow out of it fast if she was going to survive.

Nora held her book back up to just below the level of her eyes, but she was no longer interested in the words the pages held. "I'd forgotten what it was like to see them together," she said in a voice so low he could barely hear her. "In the old world, mates were everywhere. If you had one, you found them. These are the first I've seen since ... " she hesitated. "Since, well, you know, _before_."

She hadn't spoken to Deacon much about when the bombs had fallen and she had been frozen underground. It wasn't as though she was hiding it, she just rarely brought it up. And for the most part, Deacon left it alone. He had his painful memories; he saw no reason to not let her keep her own.

Though she still held the book aloft, Deacon could see the change in her. Her fingers were clenched at the pages, her jaw was tight. Around the side of her sunglasses, he could see the pull of regret at the corner of her eyes. The facade of Wanderer was breaking.

He gripped tighter at her shoulder, trying to hold her together.

"I..." she hesitated. "I should ... I should go. I'll see you upstairs."

With that, she pulled away from his embrace and made a hasty exit towards their rented room.

Deacon fought the pull to follow and pushed down the itch within his chest as he watched her leave. Instead, he glanced back to the lovers. They had shifted fully into each other's embrace, her forehead tucked against his neck, his cheek against her hair. Their hearts beat together and the world faded away.

Deacon's right hand began to drift towards his left forearm, drawn towards his own mark.

 _No_. Not here. Not where everyone could see it.

His hand dropped back to his side.

He'd been doing so well; it had been days since he had thought about Elsinore. But now, seeing the mates together, it shone light upon the hole in his soul.

No. He didn't have time for this. He didn't have room in his life for Elsinore or the emptiness she created.

Pushing the name back out of his mind, Deacon finished his beer in a long pull, and then standing a little too quickly, strode out of the bar and into the night.

At the edge of the fence line, where the bar's flickering lights gave way to the heavy cloak of darkness, Deacon paused to look back one last time at the pair. At their kiss, he turned about and carried on, leaving the lovers to gaze adoringly back at one another. He couldn't help but shake his head as he went.

Deacon knew that look well.

That was the look that got the people you loved killed.


	3. Chapter 3

_Deacon is dreaming._

 _He stands in a vast field, crackling razorgrain sprouts up to his knees. The sun is high and bright in his eyes._

 _He knows this dream well._

 _In the distance there are some mangy shrubs, a dirty creek, and then, a crooked little shack built of pallet-wood and hope. It doesn't look like much, but it's home._

 _He walks on. At the house, he pauses, his hand at the door. He wants to savour this. It's been years since he's had this dream, and it could be years more before he has it again. He breathes the summer air, let's the sun warm his face for just a moment more._

 _And then he steps through._

 _"Hey Babs, I'm home."_

 _The house is the same as he remembers it: the blackened stove, the creaking floorboards, the too small bed. But the woman, the woman waiting inside is different, is wrong._

 _Deacon stumbles at the threshold._

 _The woman's hair isn't his wife's golden blonde. Her eyes aren't his wife's sparkling blue._

 _She reaches for him._

 _"John."_

* * *

Deacon started awake.

He sat up in the bed, panting slightly, his hand already at the gun beneath his straw pillow. The memory of the dream was already fading.

It took a moment to get his bearings. He was at Taffington, in the clean but worn room that he shared with Wanderer, his cover-wife. After leaving the bar, he had haunted the darkened outskirts of the settlements for another hour or so before returning to their room. He had found her reading the same paperback mystery she had mocked earlier that evening, and more engrossed by the story than she would care to admit, she had offered to take first watch.

As Deacon swallowed back his panting breaths, across the room, Nora watched him from the bench beneath the window. It was early still, only the faintest hints of blue painted the predawn sky. They were different people in those hours. With no audiences to fool, they were stripped clean of their covers, left barefaced and open to each other. Deacon saw a hollowness in her eyes that she managed to hide in the daylight hours.

"Bad dreams?" she asked quietly.

Deacon shrugged, even as he clicked the safety back on his pistol. "Nah. Just sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns, like always."

She regarded him in silence for a few moments, giving him that same look she had whenever he lied. Then, she stood, and with light steps, came to sit next to him on the bed. Her palms spread out on the linens as she leaned her weight back upon them. Her little finger brushed against his own, and Deacon fought the shiver that shot up his spine.

"It helps to talk about it," she offered.

He feigned a yawn and a stretch. "Blegh. Well, I'm tired. Gotta lot of world-saving to do tomorrow, so it's back to bed for me..."

Nora settled deeper into her lean, preventing him to from lying down. With a cocked eyebrow, she waited.

It was so late that it was early and Deacon wasn't in the mood for sharing, but experience had taught him that Wanda could be damn stubborn when she wanted. "Okay, fine. Fine," he sighed. "Look, I don't share this with everyone, okay? It's a part of me that I'm not exactly proud of," he began. "Back before I came to the Railroad, I was in the Brotherhood in the Capital. I grew up in it, the whole 'Dangers of Technology' and 'Folly of Man' and all that."

The lies came so easily, he could do it half asleep. It was a good story, one he'd told many times before. It gave him some history without revealing too much. It had easy enough details that were just as easily forgettable.

"And then one day, just after I made Knight, they sent us out on this recon mission past this new little settlement. They seemed like nice folk to start - welcomed us in, offered us food, a place to rest - but, well, turns out every last one of them was synths." He hung his head for dramatic effect. "My CO, he ordered us to -"

"Stop." Her voice was soft even in the command.

Deacon watched as she shook her head at him. It was then that he noticed the tip of a scar peeking out from her collar. It was superficial, old and faded, probably from her life before the war. He'd always thought her perfect and pristine when she had walked out of the vault. But now, somehow the quiet and the dim blue light brought out their truest selves.

"There's joking, and then there's lying. I'm your partner, Deacon. You can joke if you want, but you don't have to lie to me."

He glanced back to her eyes and found only disappointment there.

"If you're not ready to be honest, just say so. You don't have to lie."

"Wanda - "

She held up a hand again to silence him. "No. Let's just forget about it, okay?" She checked the time on her Pip-Boy. "It's time to swap anyways."

Before he could get another word in, she settled onto the bed, and drawing the rough blanket up to her ears, turned away from him. Silence filled the space once more.

As Deacon watched her sleep, he felt something very much like remorse.

* * *

At mid morning, they set out to Malden.

Hidden behind her sunglasses and dirty flannels, Wanderer thanked the inn-keeper for her hospitality, and managed to go completely unrecognized even in the bright sunlight. Deacon held back his own glow of pride at his protégé's success.

They trekked north with their same easy camaraderie, trading jokes and long silences. Nora didn't mention their midnight chat, and Deacon began to wonder if it too had been a dream.

When they reached the station, the streets were quiet. Only a lonesome raven's caw and the rustle of old debris filled the air.

"You sure this is the right place?" Nora asked, fiddling with the map on her Pip-Boy. "There's no one here."

Deacon shrugged. "Well, looks like it's another successful mission for the Death Bunnies." He held his hand up to Nora. "High-five, team!"

Despite her eye-roll, Nora returned his high-five. "Sure, I guess we can go ahead and ignore that big ominous looking train station over there - "

" _Hostile sensor reading detected._ "

They both had guns drawn and safeties off as they spun around to find a pair of synths approaching from behind the far side of the station. Four fast shots rang out as Deacon took down the one on the left, and Nora, the one on the right.

Even after all his years in the Railroad, it still struck Deacon how quickly everything could change. In seconds, the quiet street was filled with gunfire; synths zapped in en masse, pouring around the side of the station in tidy rows of three. From the corner of his eye, he watched Nora line up her shots, fire, and reload with a careful focus he couldn't help but admire. A rare optimism overcame Deacon as he thought that maybe they would get through this unscathed - until the mournful howl of a mutant hound came thundering in behind them.

Deacon turned to stand back-to-back with his partner. Across the road, he spotted a super mutant toss open the front doors of Medford Memorial Hospital and barrel out into the court yard.

And just like that, they were pinched.

Nora risked a glace over her shoulder. "Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Fuck," she breathed.

"Is that Hemmingway?" Deacon managed to tease between shots.

When he spotted the flashing red light, heard the growing beep of the bomb, Deacon didn't hesitate. He dropped his rifle, grabbed Nora about the waist, and dove for cover between two concrete highway barriers. They tumbled to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust. Deacon rolled so that he covered his partner just as the bomb went off. The ground shook and a bright orange cloud rose up into the sky. Deacon felt the heat of it wash over his back.

As debris rained down upon them and Deacon clutched tighter at the woman below him, he couldn't help but reflect upon the life they had chosen. All it took was missed step, one stray bullet, one surprise around the corner, and that was it. When he pulled back to check on his partner, his sunglasses askew, they met each other's naked eyes for perhaps the first time. He saw her and she saw him, and something changed. Around them, gunfire and explosions and chaos filled the air, but for the briefest heartbeat, Deacon knew only silence.

There was no point leaping up and returning fire - the second they peaked over one of the barriers, they'd be torn apart in a hail of bullets from both sides. Their only hope was for either the synths or the super mutants to overpower the other and forget about the Railroad agents huddled between them - which meant there wasn't much hope at all. The indulgent parts of himself took over as Deacon held Nora tighter to his chest. For the briefest moment, he felt calm. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the end. But maybe that was okay. He let his eyes fall closed.

And then, the sound of a minigun filled the air.

Deacon snapped back to reality, scrambling to cover Nora once more. They both lay tensed and panting as a thousand rounds of lead poured around them, and when the shooting stopped and the minigun whirred to slow stop, Deacon was shocked to find himself still alive.

"You can come out now," a voice called to them. "Pfft. And I thought you two were supposed to be the A-Team or something?"

Glory.

They sagged in relief. With some awkward shuffling, they managed to stand. As they straightened their cloths, their eyes met again, and Deacon knew, whatever that had been, she'd felt it too.

Should he say something? But what?

His decision, whatever it would have been, came too late as Wanderer shouted, "Glory!" and rushed off to hug the other woman.

Deacon had never seen Glory accept any sort of physical contact before. But Nora? Somehow Nora got away with it. The heavy patted the smaller woman affectionately on her head as if she were some chipper terrier. "Heya, Wanderer."

Deacon let the moment and whatever it may have been fall away. Straightening his sunglasses, he righted his mask and tucked whatever vulnerabilities had emerged back down within himself. "What? No hug for me?" Deacon held open his arms in invitation. His offer earned only a scoff from Glory.

With greetings said and stories shared, it only made sense to team up. Guards were sparse and traps were easy on the first level of the station. If he were having a rare moment of honesty, Deacon would even admit that he was enjoying working with the other two heavies. They cleared out the ticketing area in a few minutes, quick, quiet, clean. It was only when they moved past the platforms that they hit real resistance. They paused when they reached a makeshift barrier, the muffled chatter of Institute Synths filled the space behind it.

Glory peaked her head around the barrier. "Shit. There's about twenty Gen 1's up there," she whispered. "We go in guns blazing and this goes south really damn fast."

The trio gave a quiet retreat back to the main station, looking for another way past. All the other tunnels were caved in, save for a thin maintenance hall running parallel to the main line, but it too was locked behind a chained door.

"Hey," Nora hissed in whisper, pointing up at the air vent above the door. "Gimme a boost."

The hole was small and high. Of the three of them, only Nora had a chance of squeezing through, and even then it would be a tight fit. Deacon peered through the door's clouded window and down into the black unknown of the tunnel beyond. Even if she got through the hole, the door's chains were rusted tight; she would have to move on down the hall on her own.

"Wanda, there's no points for heroics," he warned.

But it was too late. Glory was already lifting Wanderer up and into the vent. Deacon bit back a curse as he watched his partner slide gracelessly through the opening, and land in something like a sliding summersault onto the greasy floor. A few muffled curses made their way to him, before he saw her stand, give her cloths a futile dusting, and then flash him a quick thumbs-up before moving onwards. At the end of the hallway, she knelt, and with a few quick flicks, had the locked door picked with nothing more than a screwdriver and a copper bobby pin. Without a backwards glance, she slipped through the cracked door, and then, vanished from Deacon's sight.

As they waited, a sick feeling welled up from his stomach and into his throat. Beside him, Glory looked calm - bored even - but for Deacon, every second that ticked by felt like another pin stabbed through his chest. He'd had partners before, had run a thousand dangerous missions before, but sending Nora off to face danger alone made his teeth clench. Whatever was happening between them - their conversation last night, the shared look as they huddled for cover - something had to be done. What exactly, Deacon was unsure. But it couldn't continue. It couldn't go any further.

At the barrier, the Gen 1's turned in unison and flooded out down the far hallway, away from Deacon and Glory.

"Shit," Glory whispered. "Let's go."

Glory back along the tracks towards the barrier. They crept beyond the wooden wall, and finding it deserted of the synths, continued to hug the shadows as they moved forwards. They froze when they heard a muffled fizz and a long sequence of zaps from further down the tunnel. Up ahead, sparks of blue light shone out from around the edges of another access door.

When silence finally followed, Deacon and Glory began to advance once more. They made it to just before the door when Wanderer popped out from around the corner, and Deacon nearly melted with relief.

"Ta-da!" She gestured the other agents onwards into the side room. Inside, they found twenty-one disabled Gen 1's scattered over the floor. Around them, spent tesla coils and power cells littered the area, and long lengths of burnt wires still filled the air with an acrid smoke.

Glory whistled through her front teeth, tapping her toe against a fallen synth. "Gotta say, Deacon, if Wanderer starts spouting poetry, she'll have you replaced."

Nora grinned as she hopped onto a bench, and with the toppled floodlights pouring in upon her, began to recite.

 _"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,_  
 _The earth, and every common sight,_  
 _To me did seem_  
 _Apparelled in celestial light,_  
 _The glory and the freshness of a dream._  
 _It is not now as it hath been of yore;-_  
 _Turn wheresoe'er I may,_  
 _By night or day,_  
 _The things which I have seen I now can see no more."*_

She curtsied towards the other woman at the mention of 'glory', and when she finished, Nora gave a final dramatic bow to her imagined audience.

It was a poem Deacon had never heard before. He tried not to wonder about why she chose it.

Glory barked a laugh. "Pfft, sorry, D. You're done for."

"What are you apologizing for? This is great! Tell Dez I'm putting in for retirement." He sighed wistfully. "I'm gonna sail to Cuba and fish marlin till the sea takes me."

His jest was lost on the women, who had returned to ignoring him. Nora hefted Glory's minigun up and down, marvelling at how the synth even managed to lift it. Glory smirked, pretending to be above enjoying the praise.

The rest of the station went quickly. With the main body of Institute synths taken care of, that left only the half-dozen raider hold-outs to be dealt with. Deacon put three rounds in Helter Skelter's chest, and the tunnel fell silent. Malden Station was theirs.

"That's the last of them," Glory confirmed. "Everyone good?"

Nora hummed in agreement, already poking through crates and pockets looking for salvage.

"D-man?"

Collapsing down on the raider leader's soiled old couch, Deacon whined. "Owww. Ow. Ow ow ow ow. Owwww."

Glory hurried to his side. "Shit, you hit?"

He held up his hand, a dramatic quiver in his lower lip. "I got a splinter."

Glory was not amused. "Oh for fuck's sake, D," she groaned. Huffing at his games, she hefted her gun over her shoulder and headed for the station's exit.

It should not have come as a surprise to Deacon when Nora appeared silently at his side. Without a word, she produced a pair of tweezers from a pouch upon her belt, grabbed his hand, and gently removed the splinter. When her hands brushed the discoloured patch on his forearm, Deacon nearly jumped out of his skin; the contact was electric, sending sizzles down his spine.

When she was done, she lifted the digit to her lips and pressed a gentle kiss upon it.

Deacon's throat went dry. Things were getting out of hand between them. Whatever was happening was too fast and too personal. "That's not very sanitary, Wanda," he warned.

She stood and smiled, silent and just a bit too beautiful for his heart to take, and followed Glory back out through the station.

Deacon stared at her, wide-eyes thankfully hidden behind his sunglasses, totally, definitely, not even the slightest bit, in love.

* * *

*Poetry excerpt from _Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood_ by Wordsworth


	4. Chapter 4

It was raining by the time Deacon reached the lighthouse.

To the locals, it was Kingsport, a forgettable settlement by the sea. To the Railroad, it was Mercer Safehouse, the first stop on the way out of the Commonwealth.

Despite the lighthouse's pivotal new role, there weren't any packages in play tonight - just Caretaker and his lone intruder, Wanderer. The jittery old man had sagged in relief when he recognized Deacon, and for once, Deacon was glad he had put off getting a face change for so long.

He gave Dogmeat a pat on the head and then started up the winding staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

He and Wanderer, they'd been working separate jobs for a couple weeks now. For all that Nora gave to the Railroad, she had other obligations. When they didn't have urgent work for her or their Institute leads had run dry, Deacon and Wanderer would often part ways. She had settlements all across the Commonwealth that demanded her attention and new friends to help her along the way - Deacon had only the Railroad.

The intel that drove Deacon here had reach HQ from Beacon Hill via courier. The good news was that Stockton's daughter was safe, and for that, the Railroad would forever have the old man's support. The bad was that outside the quaint little settlement of Covenant, a team of Minutemen were still digging long rows of graves.

At the top of the tower, he found her in the rain. She wore her blue vault suit and Pip-Boy; for better or worse, she'd been General Byron for this. Sitting with her legs dangling over the edge, she leaned forward to rest her folded arms against the lowest bar of the cold iron railing. A half empty bottle twisted about her fingertips, another waited at her side. The rain was slowly soaking her through, but in the warm summer's night, she didn't seem to notice. Her eyes flickered over to meet him for only the slightest moment before she turned her attentions back towards the sea.

Despite the tidy bedroll and warm lantern he spotted within the lighthouse's glass house, he joined her in the rain. Deacon slid in beside her. "Heavy drinking and slippery ledges don't exactly mix well, Wanda," he warned.

She shrugged and took another sip. For a moment, she paused as though about to say something, but then shrugged it off and drew another long pull from the bottle instead.

"You gonna tell me what happened?" Deacon asked.

She sniffed. "Like you don't know already."

It was true. Deacon knew enough of the details to put the story together. But this wasn't about getting the facts. This was about letting her tell it. "It helps to talk about it," he said before adding with a shallow laugh, "Or so I've heard, anyways."

She remained silent and Deacon didn't push her beyond that. He knew her well enough to know that it was just a matter of time. Eventually, with a bit more liquor and a lot more rain, she opened to him.

"I killed them."

That he knew already. With a silent nod, he stole the bottle, took a sip and waited for her to continue.

"Covenant sent a rep to the Castle, saying they were thinking of joining up. Preston and I went up to make introductions, and it was nice and tidy and _civil -_ probably the nicest damn place I've seen since ... before." She took back the bottle, and after another sip added, "Maybe a bit Stepford, but still nice. Anyways, we get there, take a walk around, Preston is so damn impressed he's ready to have them sign the dotted line post haste, but I just can't shake the feeling that there's something off."

It was good intuition, Deacon had to admit. He'd been past the settlement a few times, but never managed to make it in the front gates. Seeing glimpses of the community beyond, it had looked like the safest, happiest, healthiest place in the whole damn Commonwealth. So of course, Deacon had been suspicious too.

"Eventually this traveller, Dan, pulls us aside. Tells us Amelia Stockton - yeah, Old Man Stockton's daughter - has gone missing somewhere around there, and the locals are being really damn cagey about the whole thing. So we poke around some, and long story short, there's some dead caravaners up the road, and a terminal full of `orders', and just like that we realize that the little happy village is kidnapping synths."

This Deacon knew as well. Stockton's courier had briefed HQ on the gruesome details of Covenant's Compound. Deacon had ducked out of the meeting before the courier had finished, knowing full well that Desdemona would try to send him to investigate before the Minutemen trashed the place with their good intentions. Glory and a couple backups would do just as well. Seeing the red rims about Nora's eyes confirmed that Deacon had been needed elsewhere.

"Maybe we should have waited, sent for reinforcements or got word to HQ or something. But it was Stockton's daughter - I couldn't just leave her there. Preston and I, we talked our way into the Compound. We had no idea what the hell they were doing in there and ... just, _fuck_. _Fuck_."

At some point, they had drawn nearer to one another, a slow but constant creep that neither had intended nor noticed, until at last their sides were touching.

" _Baseball,"_ her words like an accusation drew him back. "They were killing people - synths and not - because of how they played _baseball_. The woman in charge, Chambers, she tried to explain." Nora's voice was cold as she hissed the words as venom. "She tried to justify, tried to bargain."

She paused, but Deacon already knew what would follow.

"So I shot her." She reached for the second bottle, cracked the seal, and took three long swallows. "And then I shot the guards, and the `scientists' and everyone else in that damn hole." Her eyes were closed now. "The Compound guards were one thing: they were hurting people and we had to fight our way out, but then ... " She put down the bottle and brought her hands up to the railing to cushion her forehead as she drooped forwards. "We went back to the settlement. We weren't looking to hurt anyone. We were ... fuck, I don't know what we were doing. Tell them the Compound was blown? Ask them nicely to stop? March into the middle of town with our guns out and tell them they were under Minutemen occupation?"

The lesson to be told here was obvious: don't go in without a plan. They had been reckless and sloppy and nearly gotten themselves killed. But, seeing her now with rain drops covering the long streaks of tears down her cheeks, Deacon knew this wasn't the time for lessons. He stayed silent and let her speak.

"They opened fire on us at the gate. We had next to no cover, Preston took one in the shoulder. I got him down and out of fire and - damn, I must have hit him with at least five stimpaks. I don't know how he didn't have a seizure," she stammered as her story fell way to rambling. "They just kept coming, so I just kept firing and ... and Penny in her green dress and Talia ... Talia who was just so _damn afraid_ after watching her parents be killed by synths. Good people. Good, scared people." She took another long pull from the bottle. "And I killed them."

Deacon looked again out over the water and the moonlight that spilled onto it. They had found themselves in those late, honest hours once more. The lies and covers he wove throughout the day had no place here. It was just him and her and the sea.

"I thought I could do this. I thought I could find my son and build a safe home for him without losing myself along the way. But I can't, Deacon. I can't. I'm not some hero. It's been, what? Months? I've already done so many horrible things."

He was supposed to do something - pat her shoulder, hold her hand, give her a hug - something. But nothing would be enough to end the hurt he felt pouring off of her in long waves. She had no idea how good and honest and pure she still was in this world. That she was crying over hurting anyone, let alone a settlement full of synth-killers meant she still had more humanity left in her than nearly anyone else alive in the Commonwealth.

What comfort could he give her but some truth?

His voice was gravely when he spoke and finally broke the silence. "Everyone - Tom, Dez, you, even that asshole Carrington - they deserve to be in the Railroad," he began. "But me," he shook his head. "I'm a fraud. To my core."

Nora's attention snapped to Deacon. Now it was her turn to hold her tongue and let her partner speak.

"When I was young, a hell of a long time ago, I was ... well, scum. I was bigot. A very violent bigot," he began. Just like that, it all came out, his childhood, the Deathclaws, even the lynching. He laid it bare before her.

He stared straight ahead, eyes blank as they cast over the vast black sea before them. Letting the truth of his past spill out, even faint though it was in details, it was harder than lying. All he had to do was recite the facts of what had already happened - no planning, no plotting, no careful checks for consistency - just the facts. It didn't have to have emotions. It didn't have to have meaning. But god, it was hard.

And then, he came to the hardest of it all: Barbara. Desdemona must have known about her, maybe Carrington too, but certainly no more. His wife was a portrait of his past that he had not unveiled since her death. But somehow, sharing her memory with Nora felt right.

"And she was perfect, you know?" he sighed. "I didn't deserve her, didn't come anywhere close. She knew everything: who I was, what I'd done, and she took me in anyways." He shook his head. "And then karma and the Deathclaws came a knockin, and ... and it turns out my Barbara was a synth. I didn't know. She definitely didn't know."

The part that followed - the worst part, the part that had left a hole in his heart and still woke him with cold sweats at night - that part, he had never said it before. Not to Des. Not to the small collection of friends and family he had abandoned with his old life.

"They killed her."

When he skipped over those details, it wasn't for lack of memory. In his mind's eye, he could see it all: his beautiful wife sprawled cold and lifeless upon the floor, the red pool beneath her that soaked through her pale blue dress and stained her golden hair, the taunting 'Deathclaws' tag spray-painted upon their walls.

The rest of the tale was easier. Unlike the memories of his wife, Deacon had no emotional ties to what came after. How he hunted down each of the Claws, killed them slow and dirty, it was as though they weren't his memories at all. They were like a story he'd heard somewhere and now recited to his partner. The image of their bloodied corpses where just pictures in his mind, and not his heart.

As his confession came to a close, Deacon turned back to face Nora. She should be disgusted or, at very least, disillusioned to his nobility. He'd help lynch an innocent man. He'd a dozen stupid gangster kids. And yet, as he met her eyes, he found only kindness and compassion there. He was frozen at the sight of her. With the faint sheen of rain upon her, she shone bright in the faint moonlight.

Deacon suppressed a shiver when her hand came to rest upon his cheek. He should have stopped her. He should have pulled away. Instead, he leaned into its gentle warmth, his eyes drifting closed. It felt so right. Like that touch alone could drain all his sins away.

Her hand slid up his jaw, higher and higher, up his temple and beyond. When it reached the top of his head, she pulled off his cap, setting it carefully at their side. Huddled raindrops fell free and trickled down the back of his neck and on to his spine.

When she reached for his sunglasses, Deacon didn't stop her - _couldn't_ stop her. It was as though some force beyond his understanding kept his hands pinned to his sides. Grasping the lenses, carefully, reverently, with both hands, she folded them, and set them upon the forgotten cap.

And then her hands were back upon him, warm and soft. They stroked over his jaw, and up to the back of his neck. With a gentle pull, she drew their foreheads together, and for a few peaceful moments, they breathed together.

It was a comfort he didn't deserve, in a moment not even meant for him. Baring his past, his very soul, Deacon felt a change within him. For just the slightest of moments, he felt like John again.

And then, as Nora shifted, she knocked the empty bottle over with a jarring _clank_. It rolled over the side of the ledge and smashed down on to the rocks far below. The moment shattered with it.

Deacon pulled away with a start, just as the reality of their situation came crashing back in - the Railroad, the Institute, his dead wife, her missing son, twenty fresh graves in Covenant. Leaning back, he put some much needed distance between. One of his hands ran over his bare head in a mimicry of combing back his absent hair, while the other scrambled for his sunglasses. When they were safely back in position, he was Deacon once more.

His cold bark of laughter was almost believable. "Geez, Wanda, this is where you quote some old book and make me feel better."

With his shields back in place, Deacon managed to meet her gaze. She looked... sad? Confused?

Nora thought for a moment, as though weighing out the winding paths of her future that lay before her. Despite the moment, despite how much she had grown in these past months, despite what they both had felt, she took the safe road. Settling a respectable distance away from Deacon, she turned to face the cold Atlantic and began to recite.

" _Sweeping up with the waves of those movements, plunging back with them, the heart thus forgets its own failures and finds solace in an intimate harmony between its own sadness and the sea's sadness, which merges the sea's destiny with the destinies of all things."_

"Proust," they whispered together.

And after that, what else but silence could follow?

The rain had ceased, and the clouds were waning, giving way to starlight. They'd come through the storm. The safety of dawn lay just beyond the horizon. They sat together in silence.

With Deacon keeping watch, Nora worked her way through the second bottle; she had earned this night's reprieve. It was only hours later, when the first shades of violet began to swell into the sky, that she began to fade into sleep. When her eyes drifted close and she began to lean into his shoulder, Deacon knew it was time for the night to end. Nora's evening of self-indulgent self-pity was over, and in the morning, she would have to take up the mantle of General Byron and Agent Wanderer once more.

He nudged her awake. "Come'on, pal. Let's get you to bed."

With some grumbling, he helped her rise, mindful of the slippery ledge and her inebriation. With one of her arms over his shoulder, and his own about her waist, they got her up the last few steps and safely into the glass house. While he bent to light the lantern beside the bedroll, Nora swayed in the center of the enclosure for a few moments, and then seemed to forget that Deacon was even there. With a groan and a stumble, she kicked off her boots, and struggled to peel off her damp vault suit.

Deacon froze, clueless what he was supposed to do as his partner stripped down in front of him. Thankfully, beneath her vault suit, Nora revealed a greyed old t-shirt, and a pair of plain black underwear. She tossed the dripping suit to the ground, and staggered over to the bedroll. She was out again the moment she hit the blankets.

With a much put-upon sigh, Deacon retrieved the vault suit and hung it over a rail so it would dry. On his way out of the glass house, he turned last minute to grab the coarse wool camp blanket and to toss it over his snoring partner. As he bent to straighten it over her, his gaze caught at the bottom of her shirt, which had ridden up near indecently in her sleep, and at the faint mark that it had revealed.

He stared at the word seared into her skin, in the most plain and unmemorable script possible. _John._ In a bland grey, it looked like the work of a typewriter with spent carbon paper. The only thing memorable about the mark was the sheer size of it; while most marks measured a few inches in length, hers covered the entirety of her lower left rib cage, curving from beneath her breast, around her side and onto her back. It was a strange irony: the name of a man so clearly trying to be forgotten, burned so very memorably into the skin of this woman.

Deacon swallowed down his surprise. It was uncanny, sure. Unnerving, even, in its coincidence. But that was all it was: a coincidence. He'd met literally dozens of girls with ' _John'_ on their skin; this was nothing new. There were a million Johns out there, but only one Elsinore, and, despite his inconveniently growing attraction to her, the woman before him was not his Elsie - the Vault Tech register had confirmed it. This was Nora Byron, meant for some other poor John, who had lived and died two hundred years ago.

It was tragic really. A mate was exactly the person you would want to hold your hand right now, to rock you in their arms and tell you that it would be okay. But Nora was alone in this world. Her husband was gone. Her soulmate was gone. And Deacon was nothing but a piss-poor substitute for both.

Nora stirred, sitting up and looking about in the darkness.

"Deacon?"

In the last embers of the lantern's light, she looked so lost and brave and beautiful that Deacon's throat felt tight. He wasn't her husband. He wasn't her soulmate. But he could be her partner, her ally, her friend. It wasn't near enough, and yet it had to be enough all the same.

He cleared his throat and slid down to sit upon the hard lighthouse floor. "I'm here."

Her sigh of relief was soft and childlike in its innocence. She was asleep again within a few moments.

Deacon leaned back against the cool glass walls, pulled his knees up to chest, and waited for the sunrise.

* * *

 **AN** : _Sorry for the delay. I really didn't know what to do with this chapter. Deacon is in some pretty deep denial. Hopefully next chapter he'll start to dig himself out... or maybe just go deeper down?_


	5. Chapter 5

The morning found them at Caretaker's firepit, nursing cups of 200-year-old coffee, and somehow the world made sense again. The sky was blue, the breeze was warm, and though songbirds had died out long ago, it was close enough to peace. When their chipped mugs were empty, Nora changed out of her vault suit, tucked her Pip-Boy into her pack, and sent Dogmeat home with a reluctant hug. With a final wave to Caretaker, Deacon and Wanderer set off down the dusty road, two anonymous travellers once more.

It was easier after the lighthouse. Having seen her mark, Deacon could be his partner's best pal without guilt or worry about whatever it was that he had thought he'd felt. Nora had had a husband and a soulmate, and that was surely more than enough romance in a lifetime for anyone. She and Deacon were just pals and partners. No romance at all. Nope. Not even the teensiest tiniest hint of it. None. Zilch. Nada.

So they travelled together for a few weeks, running odd jobs for the Railroad and any other settlements that popped up along their way. They didn't talk about Covenant or its dark prison cells, just escorted packages and cleared out feral nests as they twisted their way about the map.

And because they were just best pals (and definitely nothing more), playful flirting had found its way back on the menu. Because between two pals, it was harmless and meaningless and just good fun. Right?

The rhythm was easy and the work constant, and through from that, the roads seemed to draw shorter and the burdens just a little lighter. Until one day, when Deacon couldn't help but feel that the shades of good karma were creeping ever so undeservingly up behind him, the winding road led them north, back to Sanctuary.

As they passed the Red Rocket just south of town, Nora dug in her heels. "Let's camp here tonight," she said, and Deacon knew well enough not to question. Just like any other settlement, there was a trade-off between security and anonymity. Tonight, in the quiet of a faded spaceship's shadow, they surrendered the former for the latter.

Nora didn't say it, but Deacon heard the other message loud and clear: tomorrow, when she entered Sanctuary, she would be General Byron again, and Agent Wanda would be on indefinite leave. And since she knew that Deacon tried to keep his face hidden as much as possible, she wouldn't be asking him to join her, probably even expected and understood that he would be gone in the morning. So tonight was a fond farewell before they parted ways.

And because it was easier, because being in the Railroad meant that the weight of the world was constantly upon them, they pulled a bottle of good ol' _Uisce Beatha_ whiskey from Nora's stash to take some of that burden away, if only for a couple hours.

As Deacon built up the fire, Nora fought with the brittle cork. When it finally broke free, the bottle sloshed down the front of her shirt. She grumbled a curse before pulling the threadbare garment off over her head. Then, she crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into a corner, resolving to deal with the sticky mess in the morning. For now, the garage was warm enough that she was content to spend the evening in her sports bra alone. She sat in the glow of the firelight, unashamed.

And there they were, the letters Deacon had first spotted weeks ago.

 _John._

Deacon tried not to look, not to stare, but the word seemed to grow, spreading up over her skin and growing, growing larger still, filling the air and creeping into the corners of the garage, until there was nothing for him to see expect _John._

Despite his efforts and the black of his sunglasses, Nora caught his eye. After a moment, she gave the slightest nod as though to say, _go ahead, ask._

So he did. "You said your husband was named Nate."

She shrugged. "He was." She stretched to her side, showing off the mark. "John came after."

 _Oh_ , Deacon nodded. That explained it: have a mark, marry someone else, find the mate afterwards. It was the same sad story he'd heard a million times. "That's, ah, rough," he commiserated.

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she poured a double into a cloudy tumbler and pressed it into his hand before he had a chance to decline. When he accepted with a put-upon sigh, she asked, "You marked, Deacon?"

"Sure. Got ' _Carrington'_ across my ass. Long name like that, spans both cheeks. Wanna see?"

She rolled her eyes. "And what would you have done if I actually said 'yes'?"

He made to stand, hands reaching for his belt. "Offer still stands," he warned.

She held up her hands in surrender. _You win,_ she gestured.

The grin that Deacon flashed as he sat back down was surprisingly genuine. Because this was who they were now: good friends, easy comrades. The jokes, the games, they could flow freely now that they had shown their scars at the lighthouse.

As the fire burned low and the bottle ran dry, Nora curled about to her side, eyes drifting back to her own mark. Even though she carried it with her always, she rarely had occasion to really see it.

Deacon caught the hesitation in her eyes, the way she bit at the corner of her lip, she slight sigh. "You got a story to tell, Wanderer?"

After a moment more of consideration, she spoke. "My parents were Blanks, but they were happy. Really happy. Really in love. They said over and over: a name on your skin doesn't mean a thing. It's the name in your heart that mattered."

 _Sure_ , Deacon nodded along with the sentiment. It sounded nice, but they both knew that life was hardly ever so simple.

"My sister - did I mention I had a big sister?" Nora continued. "Name was Joyce - anyways, she was born marked, met her mate when she started college and she just would not _shut-up_ about him. It was ' _Oh, Jeffery this'_ and _'Oh, Jeffery that'._ Made you sick to listen to it. I had dated in school - never anything serious - but hearing Joyce go on and on about it, I thought I would never know love." The corners of her lips turned upwards as her memories grew wistful. "And then I met Nate and there was just _something_ there, you know? Like night or day, I just couldn't get him off my mind. "

She took another long sigh, a bittersweet nostalgia in the memories.

"And so we fell in love, made plans, got engaged, and that whole deal. I thought I knew what it was like to have a mate. But Joyce, well, on my wedding day, she gave a toast - no one asked her to, but that was Joyce - and what did she do? The bitch said that even though we couldn't possibly know _real_ love like she did, she wished us the best."

She snorted. "Nate's sister grabbed her by the hair and drug her out of the reception. I was crying. The guests were mortified. Poor Nate was running around trying to keep everyone calm."

Deacon finished his drink in silence. This memory wasn't about him hearing it, it was about letting her tell it.

Another sigh and then a rolling gasp that might have been a laugh. "It's been two hundred years - I guess I can laugh about it now." That she could, that she did, maybe that was a sign that she was still human after all.

"You know, I don't even have a picture of him? Codsworth said that a bunch of looters came through years ago, nabbed every single picture and scrap of paper they could find from the house. He only managed to grab my law diploma and Nate's service flag when he ran to hide." She tipped up her glass and drank down the last few drops. "Who does that? Who steals a bunch of photos of boring waspy suburbanites?"

Deacon thought back to the Vault-Tech records he had browsed in Vault 111, and to the small black-and-white ID photos pinned to each. The ID card of one Mrs. Nora Byron of 2077 was of a very different woman than the one who sat before him now. The woman in the photograph was frightened, in a gentle state of shock having just arrived in an underground bunker at the end of the world. With her perfectly coifed hair and a string of pearls about her neck, she was a model for the suburban ideal that had somehow wandered on to the wrong set. And even with the worry, the dread, the fear in her eyes, Deacon's throat had gone dry at her beauty.

Her husband, Nate, had looked sterner, commanding, like a soldier steeling himself for war. Barely a couple square-inches, the photos weren't much, but they were _something_. And after many a long night wishing he had just one faded photo, one tiny sketch of Barbara to hang on to, Deacon knew that something was always better than nothing.

It was no secret that Nora gave the old vault a wide birth, and given her history, no one in the settlement thought less of her for it. But it also meant that there was no way she would ever find those little ID photos. Deacon pondered for a moment, running through the list of Sanctuary's settlers. Maybe he would 'arrange' for one to find the old files and deliver them to Nora. And she, of course, would never need to know Deacon had anything to do with it. It was just better that way.

She sighed at his silence, taking his pause for boredom. "Sorry D, you know I ramble when I drink."

He tossed a can of water at her, which despite her grimace, she opened. If tomorrow came with a hangover, she'd be no use to anyone.

"You know what's really obvious in all this?" he asked.

"Hmm?"

"You're a shitty spy, Wanda. Shoulda called you 'Chatter' or 'Blabber' or something."

She couldn't contain her bark of laughter at his teasing.

"You laugh, but next time I hear beeping, I'm pegging you in the kneecap. You can be the suicider-bait for once, terrible spy that you are; I'm too damn pretty to die."

The way her lips curled up at their corners in a distant, indulgent smile, definitely failed to pull at Deacon's heartstrings. His chest didn't flutter at all - not even the slightest.

"Anyways," she carried on with her half-forgotten tale, "We got married, had a kid, got frozen, the world ended, and ..." Her hands made a 'poofing' motion.

Despite his feigned and careful indifference, despite knowing full and well that he should leave it well alone, Deacon asked, "And 'John'?"

She shrugged. "Never found him." And with a hint of something almost like shame added, "Never a damn peep from the Bond either."

Was that better or worse, Deacon wondered.

She wiped an errand drip of water from the lip of the can. "You don't know any Johns do you?" her faint laugh ringing with the slightest tones of sadness. "I've already checked every inch of Hancock's wrinkled ass, but no luck there."

And again, was finding your mate - be it 200 years late and melted into a ghoul, maybe even a _feral_ \- was that better or worse than never finding them at all? Deacon glanced at the empty whiskey bottle and wished that they'd saved a little more for when the questions got heavy. Instead, he shook it off with his favourite play, and made the whole thing into a crappy joke.

"Well, I've got some good news for you Wanda." Deacon turned to scrounge within a long forgotten toolbox at his side. After a moment, he held up his palm, showing the word _NORA_ smeared in ancient engine grease upon it. " _'Tis_ I, 'John', your long-lost soulmate, come to whisk you away from this life of crumbling gas stations and faint pee smells," he hammed with a grin. Waggling his eyebrow, he added, "So we like, get naked now, right? Do the dirty dance?"

She threw the empty water can at his head in reply.

Nora couldn't help but look at him with some fondness as he barely managed to dodge. "You're bad news, Deacon."

"Oh, I know it, darling."

Her voice grew a little sad, a little somber. "I miss them," she admitted into the night. "Mom, Dad, even Joyce. Every little bit of that life."

"I know, pal, but you know, ' _The true paradises are - "_

" - _are the paradises we have lost,"_ she nodded as she finished the quote.

"But you'll come through it. You always do."

She pulled her rough camp blanket up to her chin, and settled back against her makeshift pillow. "I thought that too, for a while," she admitted, all dams broken and honesty flowing free now. "I was certain I could just ... but then ... I thought it was losing Nate and Shaun – and that's part of it, no doubt there – but there's something else, some _hollowness_ inside me that I just can't shake up. I feel like … I feel like I'm missing pieces."

And to that, Deacon had nothing, jokes or otherwise, to offer.

"I looked for him at first, asked around. I thought he could... he would - I don't know - _help me_ find Shaun or something. I mean, that's what soulmates do, right? But no such luck. Seems like it's every man for himself in 2287."

"Not many pre-war ghouls these days, pal," Deacon consoled. "Not many guys are going to wait around 200 years as his skin melts off. And a pile of 200-year-old bones isn't going to be much help either."

The huff she gave in reply suggested that Nora disagreed. After a moment, she kicked off the blankets, sat up, reached into a dusty crate at her side and produced another bottle of whiskey.

Deacon cocked a brow, so much for responsible drinking tonight.

Forgoing her cup, she took a long pull, and then held the bottle to angle as though pointing at Deacon. Again, her laugh skirted a scoff. "He didn't wait 200 years. It's been six months at most."

Deacon blinked - six months? "... _what_?"

"Like I said: 'John came after'. After the bombs, after the vault, after ... _Nate."_ She glanced up at the slanting ceiling and the flickering shadows that played across it from the firelight, before blinking back to Deacon's eye. "The world ended, and then I fell out of that freezer and _this_ showed up." She gestured down to her mark. "Burned like a sunova bitch when it happened too."

 _No._

Deacon's chest seized tight.

 _No._

Corking the bottle, Nora settled back beneath the covers. "You're getting all my dark secrets tonight, D. So here's one more for a nightcap: Nora isn't even my real name."

 _No._

Deacon's game fell away. Until now, faced with even the most shocking of surprises, he could always keep his cool. He could watch Diamond City go up in flames or hear Desdemona confess undying love to Tinker Tom, and not so much as blink an eye. But his partner's words had his eyes snapping wide open and his mouth falling open as he gaped in panic.

 _No_.

She _had_ to be Nora. If she wasn't Nora, then she could be ... _No_. Not possible - it was too terrifying. It was too damn dangerous.

"What's your name?" he demanded, the words coming strong, direr, than a spy should ever speak.

Oblivious to the change, Nora teased. "See? How do you not know already? Aren't you supposed to be the greatest spy in all the Commonwealth and beyond? Figure it out yourself." And with that, she turned on her side and closed her eyes to sleep, the bottle of whiskey tucked into her arm like a beloved partner.

As Nora drifted into sleep, Deacon sat in silent panic, wishing he go back in time to a half hour ago when he knew a little less and the world was a little clearer, because, _goddamn it_ , it was supposed to the easier after the lighthouse.

But it was all much too late.

So he waited for the moon to rise, the stars to clear, the crickets to chirp, before standing, setting the turrets, and leaving his partner to dream alone.

The midnight walk to Sanctuary took only a few minutes, but Deacon felt each second tick slowly by as he made his way into the settlement. The wait stretched longer as he curved his path to avoid the guard patrols and other late-night wanderers, until at last, in the darkest hour of the night, he pried open the remains of a cracked window, and let himself into the tattered remains of Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Byron's home.

As soon as she had confessed that her name was not, in fact, Nora, Deacon knew - some part of him, buried deep down inside him _knew_ the answer, had probably known it for a long time, but his eyes demanded to see what his heart held in certainty. It didn't matter that he already done the math, counting back the days since she would have stumbled out of the vault and comparing it to the day his Bond had come screaming to life. He had to see.

Just as she'd said, one of the few tokens to remain in the house was her Law diploma, tucked away for safety in a broken desk's drawer. The paper had browned with age, the glass was cracked, but the writing upon it, in a forced gothic font, was exactly what he knew would be there.

 _Elsinore._

Elsinore Annabeth Bennet, to be exact.

Well, it wasn't a perfect match to his _Elsinore Annabeth Woodhull_... but it was close enough. There were enough pieces now that he could no long deny the picture forming.

It was her. She was Elsinore. She was his soulmate, his one true match in all the universe. They completed each other in ways they couldn't even begin to imagine they had been broken. The woman he'd been waiting his whole life for was sleeping in a garage only a few minutes away.

Seeing the words upon the paper so nearly mirrored to the ones upon his skin, Deacon could finally admit what he'd been sheltering from himself for so very long: he'd loved her from the first moment he saw her.

And so, there was only one thing to do.

In the cover of night, Deacon left Sanctuary, crept out beyond its borders, through the woods and then into the city beyond, not stopping until he returned to HQ. There, he found Dez, drug her into a quiet corner, and demanded Wanderer - Nora - _Elsinore_ \- be back-benched from the Railroad.

No more missions.

No more contact.

It was the only way to keep her safe.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks for reading Part 5 of " _Deacon and Nora Drink and Talk About Sad Things Together_ "!

Yeah, Elsie's got a drinking problem. But, you know, her world ended and stuff, so she's allowed it.


	6. Chapter 6

Going _'No Contact'_ worked.

Well, it worked for a little while anyways.

For a teensy, _tiny,_ little, while.

Deacon stumbled into HQ, tired and sore and feeling every second of his years. Somehow in just a few short months, he'd gotten used to having a partner around to share the burdens, to shorten the lonesome road. Without Wanderer at his side, the missions felt longer, colder, joyless. Not that Deacon would ever admit this to himself or anyone else, for that matter; he had worked solo for years before Nora, he could do it again just fine now, thank you.

It was late enough that only a skeleton crew of lookouts and listeners remained awake. The agent at the back entry waved Deacon on without a word. On his way to toss Tom some new toys, Dez caught his eye. She motioned to the far hall, and with a puff of her cigarette, warned him, "She's here."

Deacon froze. There was no need to question who _'she'_ was.

"We agreed: Tourist," he said, careful, cautious, with that measured tone of warning.

Desdemona shrugged. "She showed up earlier today. Said she knows we need help and we're idiots for not taking it. Wants to know why we've blacklisted her."

"And did you tell her?"

Her exhale of smoke was long and taunting. "What? That she's your soulmate and you're too chickenshit to do anything about it? No."

Deacon fought back a cringe. Of course Dez had figured it out. They wouldn't have made her station chief for nothing.

"She can't be here."

When his boss, his mentor, his friend answered, her voice was tired, like they'd been here before. "What exactly do you expect me to do here, Deacon? When unwanted visitors show up at HQ, either we bug-out, or we _take them out,_ and something tells me you don't want her strangled in her sleep."

Glancing over Desdemona's shoulder, Deacon spotted Nora (the woman who in spite of the letters curving along her ribcage, who in spite of the connection so painfully straining between his chest and hers, could never be his soulmate) sleeping on a dingy mattress near Tom's station. His eyes narrowed to see Drummer Boy asleep in the space next to her own. Although there was a respectful distance between the pair, the sight still tried to pull the corners of Deacon's mouth into a scowl.

As he moved to step towards them, Dez stopped him with a hand upon his shoulder. She gave him the long, hard stare that broke so many of the new recruits. "Why are you here, Deacon?" she asked.

Not 'why now', but 'why _ever'_. Why had he given up his entire identity to sleep with one eye open in a dripping catacomb? He'd heard this speech before. "Oh, you know, the fame, the fortune, the glamorous lifestyle," he mused.

And she, just the same, had heard Deacon brush off a conversation a thousand times when the words drew heavy. "We all make sacrifices," she said, like it was easy, like it was everyday, like Deacon didn't know about the blocky little "VB" just above her left ankle or the long, distant looks she would get sometimes mid-cigarette.

"We need her, Deacon. We need the intel she provides. You know her Minutemen are working on something big - we need in." She leaned in, and the scent of smoke and choler filled his lungs. "We're _this_ close to the Institute, Deacon. Think about the lives depending on us."

It was then that she seemed to catch herself, see her emotions begin to fall through, and, just as quickly gather them back in. "We need her, but we need you too," she admitted, and for Desdemona, it was high praise. She leaned back again the stone column with arms crossed before her. "So figure it out. Do what you have to do to make it work."

Without parting words, Deacon slid on towards Tinker Tom's station and the woman who slept there. In the half-light of HQs low hours, she looked so far removed from the all bright-burning versions Deacon had seen of her. With Drummer Boy's lanky form stretched out just a few feet away, her smallness - her mortality and her frailness - came through. As the General, Nora Byron stood ten feet tall, crossed rivers in a single stride, crushed raiders beneath her boot. As Agent Wanderer, she melded with the shadows, outwitted consoles and charmed locks. But now, still and silent, stripped down to only _Elsinore_ , she was only human. A lost and lonely human, adrift in a strange land.

Deacon felt the guilt drift in. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe he should go, wake her up, and explain everything.

Would she forgive him? Slap him? Kiss him?

The simple truth was that he missed his partner, his best friend, the woman who had so quickly and effortlessly become his other half. He had lived his whole life without his soulmate, waking each morning to a promise unfilled, and falling asleep each night with the knowledge that he was strong enough to endure regardless. But now, just knowing the truth, just seeing her and _feeling_ that promise so very, very near - so very, very reachable - it made the _absence_ of his mate unbearable.

And so he went to her.

Stood before her.

Knelt.

Reached out a hand, and ...

... _and_...

... and shook Drummer Boy awake.

Because this wasn't about Deacon, and it certainly wasn't about John. This was about the Railroad and the Institute and a thousand enslaved synths.

"What the hell, Deacon?" Drummer Boy scowled up at him, squinting at the light.

"You gotta move. Go sleep in the back."

"Fuck off," the man mumbled, his eyes already closing.

Deacon sighed dramatically, "Tom's gonna start running chems in a minute. But, I mean, if you wanna smell like burnt hair and cat piss, you go ahead and keep on snoozin' right there."

When Drummer Boy eventually rose grumbling from the mattress and shambled away to bunk down in the back hall, Deacon threw some of Tom's crap on his vacated spot; no one would risk touching Tom's mad inventions to sleep there.

And so he held there for just a moment more, watching Nora sleep, knowing that this had to be the very last time they crossed paths. Because that was life - their life, their choice - and though it wasn't easy, it was _right_. Then, he silently tucked an extra blanket around Elsinore, blew out the lamp, and disappeared back into the night.

* * *

He tried to stay away.

He wanted to stay away.

He _needed_ to stay away.

Deacon had a thousand other missions he should be running, a million other places he should be, but somehow, day after day, he found himself trailing Elsinore's shadow. And that's why this was the last time Deacon was going to follow Nora.

Sure, maybe he'd thought that the last one or two (or twenty) times he'd haunted her footsteps would be the last, but this really was _the last_ time. Once Nora made her way into a settlement, Deacon was out of there, off to vanish into the crowd and get on with his life.

After all, as his pal Proust had said " _The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind_ ". There was no physical tether tying Deacon and Elsinore together, just some half-imagined emotions. And like any other emotions or flights of fancy, they could be repressed, swallowed back down into the stomach, and, with enough practice, forgotten entirely. They weren't the first soulmates forced to live apart, and they sure as hell wouldn't be the last; life went on and so would they.

Yep. Definitely. The last time for sure.

After the night Deacon had left Nora sleeping in Railroad HQ, Dez, Carrington and even Tom had simply shrugged when Wanderer asked for new missions. They each claimed to be waiting for new orders from above, they each lied and said they hadn't seen Deacon in weeks, that he was probably off running missions and wouldn't be back for some time. Eventually, with no work to be done and no more bottles to drink alone, Nora had wandered out of the old church basement and back into General Byron's cold office.

But Deacon wasn't off running special missions. He wasn't escorting some special package to safety. He wasn't on some deep-cover assignment to save the good people of the Commonwealth.

Hell, most days he wasn't even a hundred yards away.

It wasn't like the time spent following the General of the Minutemen was a complete waste. Though he may be loath to admit, Dez had been right: Nora was working on something big. She'd been up and down the Commonwealth a half dozen times, chasing leads and cutting deals. It seemed like everyone from Murkwater to Zimonja worked for General Byron these days. And through it all, Deacon had been there: the trader with the cap pulled low, the farmer in the far field, the guard enjoying a cigarette just a bit too far off in the shadows.

That is, until Nora's intel led her straight into the Glowing Sea. Deacon had lost her there. For all his work, his leads, his ears to the ground and eyes on the sky, he'd missed the plan: couldn't get close enough in the Memory Den to hear the details, and then blinked for a moment too long, and missed her arrange for power armor to be sent down to Somerville. And so Deacon could only watch in silent horror as she and Nick Valentine vanished into the orange haze, his heart sinking into his stomach as the Glowing Sea swallowed his soulmate whole.

Three days of hell, standing at the edge of the arid sea, waiting, waiting, and Deacon was certain he was going mad. His heart shook in his chest. His waking hours were spent in panic for the damn certainly that the Rads were interfering with whatever distress call Nora might be sending out through the Bond. And his nights, every time he closed his eyes, he saw her standing in sunlight, reaching for him with a sighed _John_ tumbling from her lips.

Just when he was ready to embrace a life as a ghoul, to throw good sense to the wind and dive head-first into the Glowing Sea, Nora had stepped out of the fog and back into the land of the living.

Since that near-miss, Deacon hadn't let his soulmate out of his sight. He followed her as `the General' as she cleared a path through Quincy for the Minutemen. He followed her as `Blue' as she helped Piper investigate chem smugglers in Diamond City, and as `Sunshine' as she mucked-out the old warehouses for Hancock. He'd even followed (maybe more than a little aroused) as she brought justice to the dark corners of Goodneighbour as the Silver Shroud.

For all the ups, the downs came twice as often. The worst of it, Deacon had watched through clouded binoculars as she was handed a stack of old manila folders in Sanctuary. When through a series of carefully orchestrated `coincidences', Sturges had found the Vault-Tech files and dutifully passed them on to his boss. So Deacon had watched as Nora found the photo of her husband within, and then as she politely excused herself to go cry her eyes out behind a storage shed. He let the wall he had built around the Bond crumble just a little then. He let her heartbreak through, because he deserved that _\- the clench in his chest, the ache in his soul_ \- for leaving her without a mate.

And so, he followed her now as she traced her way through Back Bay, RJ- _Fucking_ -MacCready trailing behind her with puppy-dog eyes.

With Garvey still on light-duty after Covenant, Nora had taken to dragging MacCready along with her instead. It cut at Deacon's nerves; the kid was a two-bit merc, happy to kill anyone you pointed at for a handful of caps and a synth-hater to boot. Still, at least MacCready wasn't going to run around killing synths for free (he demanded caps for that). So the kid was one up from Danse, but just barely so.

And if nothing else (and Deacon was being really damn generous here), at least MacCready wouldn't be shooting Nora in the back any time soon. She'd helped him cure his son, and if the long, shining gazes he flashed her way were any indication, the kid was already half in love with her anyways. The thought earned a snort from Deacon. He couldn't really fault MacCready for it - Nora was something else. She was the bright beacon of the Commonwealth, and sooner or later, every damn moth from here to the NCR was bound to come flittering her way.

But then again - _glaring through his scope as the cheeky bastard threw a too-familiar arm around his soulmate's shoulders_ \- yeah, maybe Deacon totally _could_ fault him for that.

Okay, okay, so maybe Deacon wasn't on the roster for sainthood either, but he didn't kill for caps or steal for pleasure. Deacon had a noble cause. Deacon had _justice_ on his side - or, you know, _something_ anyways.

Far above them, the afternoon was sliding ever onwards, and the heat of the day began to build as Deacon scurried over the rooftops, moving on to his next lookout as Nora and MacCready wandered on below.

The trip would have taken half the time or less if Nora didn't stop to dig through every single pile of scrap they happened upon along the way. Deacon might have been over-thinking it, but it seemed like her scavving had increased tenfold since she came back from the Glowing Sea. Whatever she'd seen there had been the spark to the secret Sanctuary project's flame.

Of course the Railroad had been damn curious to find out what the Minutemen were so secretly stockpiling tech for, and the version of Deacon that existed two months ago would have told them without second thought. But the Deacon of today, well, he'd stopped reporting Nora's progress to Dez weeks ago. He knew it was wrong. He knew he was hurting both their causes by sneaking around in her shadows. But then again - he gave a sad smile as he watched her brush back her hair through his scope - _Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.*_

As they reached the last open square before Hangman's Alley, Nora jogged over to an old semi, long abandoned and fading into rust. She tossed down her sack, pried open the hood, and began tearing into it for parts.

The truck was an uncommon model, one that Deacon had seen only once or twice around the Commonwealth. A quick skim through his scope suggested that it was some heavy-duty Corvega luxury rig, probably full of rare parts, and now destined for a new life in Nora's secret Sanctuary project. Whatever it was, it was clearly a treasure trove to the General, as she spent the next hour tossing pieces of junk out onto the street below.

Eventually MacCready got tired of waiting around and wandered on ahead. With his rifle slung over his shoulder and that arrogant lilt in his gait, he strode around the bend and into the alley beyond.

And then, it was just Deacon and Elsinore.

"Hey, pal," Deacon breathed, lighter than a whisper from up on his lookout's perch. "You've been busy. Makin' it real hard for me to keep up here."

Six stories down, and two hundred yards away, Nora didn't answer. She only paused for a moment to wipe back that errant lock of hair once more, and leave a little streak of engine grease across her forehead, which Deacon absolutely did not find completely and utterly endearing, before turning back to work.

They were close to both Hangman's and Diamond City, and although the area was relatively secure, something put an inch in Deacon's spine. And Nora wasn't helping at all; for all she knew, she was all alone and kicking up enough racket to draw in every supermutant in a ten mile radius. Even from the across the square, the _clangclangclang_ as she hammered at the rusted parts set Deacon's teeth on edge.

Only a few minutes later, as the setting sun made his nose itch and he shifted to warn off a sneeze, Deacon's suspicions proved right. A flicker of movement across the square caught his eye. A single raider slid out of the shadows and into the sunlight. He was there for only a heartbeat before melding back into the shadows, trying to fade back into the rubble.

But Deacon saw him clear as day: the shake in his hands screamed of Chems and poor decisions, the sag in his pants and loose flutter of shirt warned of hunger and desperation. He moved closer to the centre of the square. He moved closer towards Nora.

Deacon skimmed his rifle back and forth between Nora and raider. The raider slithered closer. Nora, wholly obvious, only hammered louder.

 _Look up_ , Deacon urged in silence. _Get your head out of that damn motor and turn around._

Deacon saw it then, the pistol strapped to the raider's side. A piece of junk, cobbled together from pipes and duct tape, but deadly enough. One lucky shot, even from the shittiest of pistols was enough to end a life.

And on and on the raider crept.

Where the fuck was MacCready?

When the raider finally drew his gun with shaking hands, Deacon was on his feet, safety off, heart pounding through his chest.

" _Behind you!_ " Deacon screamed through the Bond. Yes, of course it didn't work that way, Deacon _knew_ it didn't goddamn work that way, but he screamed down the Bond anyways and hoped that maybe, just maybe, _something_ would carry through.

" _Goddamn it Elsie, turn around!"_

But he said no words, and she heard no sounds.

As Deacon screamed into the void, the anonymous raider moved nearer still. Looming so close now it looked like he could reach out and touch her, the raider slowly raised his gun, took aim, and -

And Deacon took the shot.

* * *

A shot from a suppressed rifle isn't silent - it's _suppressed_. Instead of booming thunder, it's a skittering _crack_ that bounces along brick corridors. Quiet, but not silent.

As soon as he pulled the trigger, Deacon dropped beneath the window, his back pressed hard against the coarse brick wall. Adrenalin coursed through his veins, sending his heart into shutters. He couldn't risk a second look, but Deacon was sure enough that the raider was down to force himself to breathe a sigh of relief. Three more breathes, in and out, and then he was on the move.

Hopefully Nora had fled for cover. He couldn't feel anything along Bond - not that either of them had kept much of it open, but surely, if she was wounded, panicked and afraid, he would feel _something_.

Not risking a look until he was ten rooms over and three stories down, Deacon chose a boarded window with only the tiniest of cracks between its rotting slats, and pressed his eye against it. Between the splinters, the world was bright and tinted in hues of red and orange. It took only a moment of scanning for him to spot Nora. She stood, straight and tall and unafraid in the square, staring up at the window that he had haunted just moments ago, searching, searching, but finding nothing there.

 _Haha, fooled her_. Deacon congratulated himself. Old man he may be, but there would be no _'student has become the teacher'_ today.

He allowed himself that moment of victory to study her face. He had expected fear or confusion, maybe even a hint of panic, but instead, Deacon found only sadness and disappointment waiting there. He held his breath as she scanned along the adjacent windows, searching for any sign of the shooter. When she found none, her frown deepened and she turned away with a rueful shake of her head.

The scoff that Deacon gave when MacCready came racing back around the bend, too slow and too late, probably came damn close to blowing his cover. The younger man came to a skittering halt just a few feet in front of his boss. He gestured wildly at the fresh body between them and then hefted his rifle up to take his own scan of the skyline. From behind the boards, Deacon went ahead and flipped him off, for - you know - good measure or something.

As he was too far away to actually hear them, Deacon went ahead and filled in the pair's conversation himself - it just seemed easier that way.

MacCready slung his rifle back over his shoulder. " _Jeepers Boss, what happened here?"_

Nora only shook her head, gesturing down at the corpse at her feet and then across the square to the empty window where the shot had been fired. _"I don't know Mac, looks like some raider got the jump on me while you were off picking daisies."_

Kneeling in the dirt, MacCready rummaged through the corpse's pockets. _"Well golly gee, General, I sure am sorry."_ Finding nothing of note, the merc rose back to his feet.

 _"That's too bad,"_ Nora probably said. " _You should never have wandered off. You're fired MacCready! Pack your bags and get your sorry ass on down the road. You'll never work in this town again!"_

Deacon gave a pleased little nod to his own pantomime. Yeah, sure, he'd nailed it. That was obviously what Nora was saying. Yep. Definitely.

Instead, MacCready looked entirely too nonplussed, gave Nora a quick hug, and then threw an arm back over her shoulders. With a complete lack of shouting and other general fighting, they continued on towards Hangman's together.

Deacon sighed. Okay, so maybe his script was just a bit off this time, but it was probably close enough anyways. Nora was definitely going to fire that two-bit merc the first chance she got. Definitely. Any day now.

And as he trailed the pair into Hangman's, Deacon promised himself that he was definitely going to stop following Nora, just as soon as she ditched MacCready, which was definitely going to be any minute now.

Just as soon as they got back to Hangman's. And when Nora showed no immediate sighs of sending the merc away, Deacon assumed himself it was just as soon as they met up with the settlement's leaders.

Just as soon as they finished eating dinner, trading stories next to the fire.

Just as soon as they unpacked for the night.

And then - _Deacon settled back against the brickwork, pulling his jacket tighter about him against the night's chill and watching as Nora blew out her lantern and climbed into bed_ \- just as soon as morning came.

* * *

It was a bit past 3:00 in the morning when the sound of the bunkhouse door opening and closing started Deacon on to his feet.

He blinked his dry eyes a few time, waiting for them to pull back into focus. Had he been asleep? Of course not. Deacon never slept while on watch. Sure, sometimes, maybe, _just maybe_ , he might close his eyes for moment and take a good long blink. But not sleep.

Down in Hangman's Alley, Nora crept out of the bunkhouse and slipped like a breeze out through the back gates, leaving both the settlers and her snoring merc escort behind.

Deacon scowled as he quickly gathered his gear, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and then set off along the rooftops in chase. As if he needed more reasons to dislike MacCready, that he would let his boss, his partner, his friend, wander off into the night alone, especially after such a close call this afternoon, was ... well, let's just say that MacCready was off of Deacon's Christmas newsletter for the year.

On the filthy streets below, Nora slid through the shadows, three roads down and two blocks over, until she arrived at a rusted old mailbox, completely indistinguishable from the two others she had passed along the way. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she dropped a note into it. And then, with a swipe of chalk, left a careful white streak down the box's far side.

As she had done in the square earlier that day, she stood straight, tall and proud and silent next to the mailbox, scanning the midnight skyline. But again, Deacon was one step ahead of his old partner. He watched from the cover of some ancient ducting as she waited, completely hidden in the night.

Eventually, as the moon sank behind the crumbling horizon, Nora's shoulders fell, and with a final shake of the head, she turned back towards the settlement.

Only once Deacon had trailed Nora safely back to Hangman's Ally and waited for the lantern light in her window to go out, did he double-back to the drop site. The journey back was silent; the city still with hours of sleep before dawn. He slid down to ground level and, with a stride that suggested he owned the whole damn street, made his way to the mailbox, grabbed the note waiting within and kept on walking without so much as a pause.

Deacon didn't breathe until he slipped into the fifth-floor safehouse the Railroad kept a few blocks away. Sparing only a moment to set the locks and flip the switch on the turrets down the hall, he lit a tiny candle and tore at the paper's seal.

He read the message, short and sweet and completely meaningless to an outsider - just like he had trained her. In pretty, careful cursive, it read:

 _D -_

 _Where are you?  
Whatever I've done wrong, let me fix it.  
Let me help._

 _\- W_

And Deacon couldn't help but smile at that, because that was his Elsinore through and through: lost in a strange land, carrying the troubles of a thousand strangers piled atop her own, and still ready (and oh so willing) to take on more.

Except _\- and his smile fell_ \- not his Elsinore.

No.

Not _his_ Elsinore.

Because that was the whole point of this, to keep her distant, to keep her away from the Railroad and the Institute. Deacon traded for her well-being with the hollowness in his chest. He paid for it with their heartbreak, and to keep her well, to keep her safe, it was worth every penny.

He tipped the paper's corner into the candle's dwindling flame.

Never _his_ Elsinore.

Deacon tossed the letter into an ashtray and watched it burn.

* * *

 _ **AN:** I apologize that there was no "Deacon and Elisnore [drink and] talk about sad things together" in this chapter, but worry not, it will return next time. _

_For reference, I'm anticipating this series to be about 12 chapters. Let's see if we can actually make it to the end before I get distracted._

 _" Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us" is, of course, Proust._


	7. Chapter 7

The machine was ready.

A mess of wire and rusted panels, it didn't look all that much different from the caved-in house next door. Hundreds of hours and thousands of pieces of salvage had transformed an old foundation in Sanctuary into something out of a comic book; the Minutemen's secret project was complete.

For anyone else, it would have been difficult to rally the Minutemen behind the project. Fighting the Institute wasn't really their _raison d'etre_ \- there was enough starvation and raiders and giant radioactive spiders about to keep them busy. They didn't need to start picking fights with the mysterious subterranean bogeymen who had (mercifully) so far left them alone.

But Nora was their General, and the Minutemen would follow her into hell and back.

Still, it would have been easier to get the Railroad (or, hell, even the Brotherhood) on board. After all, she'd done the impossible, what the Railroad had been scrambling for even a scent of for years: she'd found the Institute, she'd found a way in. And aside from Deacon, the Railroad had no idea what she'd done.

Given their recent icy reception, Deacon couldn't really blame her for going with the Minutemen over the Railroad. She'd tried for weeks to offer her help at HQ, but even Tom eventually ran out of MILAs to distract her with, and he too joined the others in turning Agent Wanderer away. So when the plans from Virgil were complete, when the time came to start building, General Byron and her Minutemen had gone it alone.

To Deacon's great displeasure, they had remained neutral with the Brotherhood. Nora had even bartered for some parts from them, but thankfully never sunk to directly asking for their help. Maybe Deacon had even been a little proud, listening from behind a storage rack, 'borrowed' Scribe's suit itching at his sides, as Nora had squeezed the Brotherhood Quartermaster for all he was worth.

And now, it had all come together. The machine was ready.

Plans had been made, orders sent out, supplies gathered, and ... _contingencies_ evaluated. Tomorrow morning, General Byron would walk into the teleporter at Sanctuary, and - all going well- would step out into the Institute.

'At the first light of dawn' would have been most poetic. Or maybe they should wait for 'under the cover of night' or 'in the moon's watchful eye'. But this was the Commonwealth - poetry didn't belong here; Nora would go mid-morning, once Sturges had done a final equipment check, as practicality so demanded.

Once she stepped through, Nora would be alone, lost and cut-off behind enemy lines, where Deacon couldn't keep watch from a sniper's nest, where no one would be coming to save her. That is, if it even worked. Most likely, the whole damn thing was going up in flames the minute they switched it on.

Everyone knew it was a crazy idea. The machine was a deathtrap and sending one lone woman blindly into the hive was almost certainly suicide. But, as Deacon toured about Sanctuary (a new caravaner's coat around his shoulders, a fresh cap pulled low over his ears), he found the tone of the citizens excited, hopeful. For all that the odds were stacked against them, there was still that tiniest, miniscule, nearly atomic, speck of hope that the General would emerge back out of the transporter unharmed, her son cradled in her arms, golden sunshine pouring down upon them, and divine trumpets heralding her return.

And then (as far as Deacon was concerned anyways) brahmin would fly, hell would freeze, and Carrington would sing show tunes.

Whatever the outcome, the journey was yet a few hours away. Night clung to Sanctuary, blanketing the settlement in that sticky darkness of stagnant air and starless nights. The heart of the settlement was still, all souls abed, trying to calm their nerves and will themselves to sleep.

All, save one shadow that crept silent through the rows of houses.

Around the back tree line, over the crumbling fencing and through the brittle lawns, he went. Deacon mumbled to himself as he slipped through the back door of Nora's Sanctuary home. This was a bad idea. _Real dumb. Not your best work, buddy._ He should have just gone about his plan, been on his way while the cover of darkness was still on his side. There was no need to risk it all by stopping in for a chat.

And yet, Deacon found himself standing at the edge of Elsinore's bed, watching her sleep, anyways. Her hair was tussled and the blankets half-askew. The amber light from a lone forgotten lantern danced over her, and she was, now and forever, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing Deacon had ever seen.

Even as he reached for the medkit in his bag, Deacon knew this was a terrible idea. A horrible mistake that would cost him time and effort and could ruin everything.

He did it anyways.

* * *

Nora awoke to a pinch on her shoulder.

"Deacon?" She murmured at the man at her bedside, still half asleep and not believing her eyes.

"Hey, Wanda," her partner offered a tight smile.

She blinked blurredly at him, relieved and happy and confused at his sudden appearance. "Where have you been?" she demanded.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Deacon shook his head at her inaction. She should have already pulled a pistol on any unexpected night-time visitors, especially ones that had been MIA for so long. For all she knew, Deacon could have been replaced by the Institute. She should have been trying to subdue him. She should have been screaming her lungs out for back up. As far as she had come, she was still too damn trusting.

They'd have to have words about that later.

.. _._ _if he ever got the chance._

"Had some things that needed doing," Deacon eventually replied.

And because she still was Agent Wanda, his best and favourite partner, because they were still synched up, she knew him well enough to not demand answers he wasn't willing to give. "What are you doing here? Is there a package?" she asked, turning to the future and leaving the past alone.

As she went to sit up, Deacon shook his head and pressed her back down into the bed with a gentle hand upon her shoulder.

"Nah, nothing in play," he said with a shrug. "I'm just, ah, checking in."

Maybe she should have seen the pieces align and figured it all out sooner, but to Nora's credit, there was quite a lot going on in her life at the moment: she was in charge of a hundred Minutemen and a dozen settlements, the machine was ready, and of course, there was the whole `woman-out-of-time- with-a-missing-son-and-dead-husband' thing she had going on too.

"I don't understand," she summarized.

Right, well, why was Deacon here again? Why had he risked the entire operation to come have a midnight chat?

His mind wandered back to a torn page in an old book he had scrounged up one lonely night.

 _You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read.*_

Right.

That was why.

"I just ..." he shook his head. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry," he answered, turning away just slightly so he didn't have to bear the full weight of her gaze. "Just if anything happens, know that I'm sorry, that I tried."

Sleep's veil fell off of Nora as she sat up in the bed. Before Deacon could pull away, she had one hand upon his shoulder and the other gripping his own. The heat of her soaked into his skin and the comfort he found in the touch saw the harsh edges of his resolve begin to crumble.

With the gentlest of pressure at his side, and barely the slightest lean forwards, Nora drew him in.

"Are you in trouble?" she asked, voice dropping low. "Whatever it is - _whoever it is_ \- I can help. Please, Deacon, let me help you."

She meant it -through his sunglasses and the darkened room, Deacon could see it in her eyes, clear as day. If the Institute or the Brotherhood or even the damn Railroad were after Deacon, whatever he had done, she would be there for him. And because the world wasn't fair, she probably had no idea why.

Deacon didn't realize he had covered Nora's hand with his own until he caught himself running his thumb over the back of her wrist. She looked up at him with those big brown eyes, shining of honesty and hope, and his chest felt tight. He wondered if he was imagining the sting in his left forearm, right where his mark should have been. Did she ever feel it too?

"I'm all good, pal, really."

And maybe _that_ wasn't entirely a lie. Sure, he was going to be in a mountain of trouble really damn soon, but not yet. Now, he had a few heartbeats to sit back and enjoy the calm before the fallout rained down.

So what now? No packages, no missions, no history, what was left to talk about except the weather?

It felt like there was something more he should say, something more he should do to make up for what he was about to destroy. Instead, he stood in a rush, quickly ripped himself away while he still could, and with less grace than he would have hoped for, made for the door. "Okay, ah, good powwow, Wanda. I'll let you get back to sleep."

"Deacon, no, wait - " she called after him, jumping from the bed. She made it barely two steps before her legs seemed to give out from under her.

Deacon caught her as she stumbled, the Med-X shot he had given her kicking-in right on schedule. "Easy there, pal."

Okay, so he had drugged his soulmate. So what? It wasn't the first time he had slipped a mark something to knock them out, and it wouldn't be the last ... except - _and he caught himself there_ \- maybe it _would_ be the last. Well then, so be it. Because he couldn't do it. He couldn't stand back and watch his soulmate march proudly to her near-certain death. And at the same time, he knew that there was no force in heaven or hell that would stop Nora from going after her son.

So this was the compromise.

"Just take it easy," Deacon whispered as he lifted her back into the bed.

" _...Deacon...?"_ Her eyes turned glassy and her gaze unfocussed. She lasted only three seconds more before fading into sleep.

"Take a good long rest, pal." Deacon wanted to promise that everything would be better in the morning, but it was such an obvious lie that he didn't bother.

 _And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on,*_ he mused. It was better than the alternative.

He watched her sleep until the sun drew up over the horizon. And then, when he heard the first of the settlers begin to rise, when he could delay no longer, he stood, straightened his disguise and tucked her blankets one last time.

The kiss he pressed to Elsinore's forehead was sweet torture. It was something he'd waited his whole life for and would never have again. He took it with the knowledge that it was stolen, unearned, because the filth of his past meant that he deserved nothing more.

When he pulled away, Deacon tried to burn the moment into his mind, the scent of carrot-flowers in her hair, the pale blue light of dawn spilling upon her, the faintest whispers in her sleeping sigh. And then, while he still could, he made for the door, leaving whatever pieces of his soul he still had with her there.

As he hopped out the back window, Deacon was sure to tell Tennyson's ghost to bugger off. History had already shown him that there couldn't possibly be anything worse than loving and losing.

* * *

Taking the long loop around the back of the houses, Deacon remerged on the main road through Sanctuary just as the sun was breaking over the rooftops. He strode over to where Sturges was doing his final calibrations on the machine, a forced bounce in his step.

As he approached, Sturges did a quick double-take before offering a wide smile and wave. "Deacon! Long time, no see. Nora should be out any minute now if you're lookin' for her."

She definitely wasn't. By Deacon's count, she still had another couple hours of solid snoozing to go. By the time she woke up, Deacon would either be back with her son or a pile of ash on the concrete.

With his own wide, casual smile, Deacon replied, "Nah, change of plans, buddy. Fire 'er up. I'm going." He gestured at the machine expectantly. If he'd had any idea at all how it worked, he would have powered it on hours ago, before there were any witnesses.

"Whoa, hold 'onna minute. Nobody told me nothin' about you goin'." The other man scratched at his bushy hair for a moment before adding, "Maybe we should get the General?"

"No need. I've got the orders right here," Deacon tapped at the breast pocket of his shirt. "General's signed off on it all, and I'm ready to go."

Sturges chewed his lip for a moment, glancing between the machine, the bunkhouses, and Deacon's (empty) pocket. Eventually he said, "Look, no offence here Deacon, but we gotta at least run this by Preston." He nodded to his distant left where Garvey was emerging from the main bunkhouse and making his way over.

 _Nope_.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Deacon drew his gun. "Sorry, pal. No time for this." Still, he admired the man's caution, his loyalty to Nora.

"Oh, whoa there. Don't have'ta go wavin' that around," Sturges backed away, hands raised.

The rush of footsteps announced the arrival of another. "What the hell, Deacon?!" Garvey shouted, raising his own rifle.

Deacon didn't bother glancing at the newcomer; he kept his sights on Sturges even though his words were aimed at the Colonel. "It's me or Nora going through this. If it all goes up in smoke, can you afford to have your General smeared across the pavement?" He clicked off the safety. "I've got Sturges' holotape. I'll share any intel I find in there, but _I'm going._ "

 _And I won't come back without her son_ , he left unsaid.

Garvey considered for a moment, but Deacon already knew how this would play out. Preston was a good man, an honourable man, with good intentions and simple goals: he wanted a better world and he was clever enough to realize that he wasn't the man to lead the way. It was Nora. And Nora was too important to the Commonwealth to send on some one-way trip to wherever-the-hell this was going. It had been a farce to ever consider it.

After only a moment more, the Colonel lowered his weapon and nodded to Sturges. "Okay, do it."

Sturges was at least surprised. "Preston, come'on now - "

"Do it," Garvey ordered again.

* * *

It was white.

Painfully, blindingly, white.

* * *

Deacon stumbled out of the transport chamber and into a small control room, more than a little surprised that he was alive. Glancing around, he found himself a little underwhelmed. He'd been expecting a glowing pedestal and something conjured up by H.G. Wells himself. Instead, it looked more like an old storage room, dusty crates, mop bucket, and all.

He made it barely three steps before he was noticed.

" _Well, this is an unexpected turn of events."_ A crackling voice echoed into the chamber through an intercom. " _Where is Nora Byron?"_

 _Damn._

So much for going unnoticed. Deacon looked up into the security cameras and pointed back at himself. "What? You talkin' to me? I'm Mac from Maintenance? I work with Dave? Don't know any Noras."

The voice responded with an unamused laugh.

Deacon shrugged. It had been worth a shot.

A moment later, red alarms began to blare and a dozen Coursers stormed the room, laser rifles trained upon him.

There was no point kicking up a fuss; Deacon knew when he was outmatched. He lifted his hands into the air. "Okay, okay, let's just - "

The butt of a rifle slammed into his temple.

The world went dark.

* * *

 **AN:** *Quotes are Dickens from _Great Expectations_ , and Byron from _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_


	8. Chapter 8

For the second time that day, Deacon found himself more than a little surprised to be alive. He awoke in a cold concrete room. Above him, bright lights blurred his vision. To his sides, his hands were cuffed to the arms of a old steel chair.

He was also naked. Fully, completely, naked. No wig. No sunglasses _._ No pants. _No nothing._

Naked, but not alone.

As his vision cleared, Deacon found himself in the company of three towering Coursers, their black coats cutting sharp against the grey of the otherwise barren room.

 _Okay._

 _Okay._

 _For Elisnore. For the Railroad._

 _Okay._

Too late to feign at sleeping, Deacon flashed the trio a winning smile, but earned no reply. Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted his missing trousers (and other, perhaps, less important possessions) all laid carefully out for inspection at the back of the room. His pistol, his back-up pistol, and his back-up back-up pistol, lay in a perfect line next to his pocket knife, lockpicks, and other favourite gadgets on a cold, sterile table. He gave a wistful sigh at his sunglasses, one lens now cracked through.

"Identify yourself," the nearest Courser said.

For Deacon, that was a hard pass. He drew a wide and friendly smile, and cocked his head just a little to the side before he spoke, vowels curved hard and long. "Boy, it sure does get _crazy_ down in them old stations, fellas. You know how it is: one minute you're lookin' for the hopper and the next you're halfway to the NCR."

But they didn't know, didn't believe, weren't biting.

Above them, the lights swung ever so slightly to the droning hum of some massive and ancient machinery. Their sway and the cold drip of a rusting pipe made clear one simple fact: just a few miles from where he started, Deacon was in a whole new world, one he would not escape. He was well and truly fucked. And from that knowledge, a comforting sort of madness washed through him.

"Identify yourself," the Courser demanded again.

Deacon made a show of scanning the trio - Dmitri, Alexei, and Ivan, he named them - up and down. With a shrug, he said, "Geez, those sure are some fancy jackets you got there, fellas. You get'em at Fallons?"

That earned him a swift punch to the guts from Ivan. An inch or two taller than his companions, Ivan had white-blonde hair and cold eyes. While an aged and wizened Deacon had found he often liked synths more than his human fellows, it quickly became clear that despite his very, very best efforts, Deacon and Ivan were not going to become friends.

Next to him, Dmitri was the talker, the first and only to speak . "Who sent you?" he demanded again, voice still and even, emotionless and dead. "Who sent you?" He leaned back against the stone walls and waited for Deacon for crumble.

But Alexei - _dear sweet little Aloysha_ \- was clearly going to be Deacon's favourite. No questions. No fists connecting to faces. Alexei stood quietly in the corner while his brothers worked. Watching. Waiting. In need of a hug and new best pal.

"What is your name?"

Deacon turned back to Dmitri and shrugged. Deacon was a deadman. And, well, that was fine, really. He'd signed up to the Railroad knowing it was a life sentence. If anything, he was surprised he'd lasted this long. Almost all the agents that had first welcomed 'John D.' into the Railroad were long, long gone. Either drifting into a shaking, twitching retirement, or lost to rot in some ditch, they had left Deacon to guide the next generation alone.

Another punch, this time to the jaw, left Deacon tasting blood. He spat the sharp taste of copper and salt on to the floor, wiping his chin against his bare shoulder. His only hope was that they would end him fast and clean, send him off with a quick bullet to the brain before his walls began to crumbled and the Railroad leaked out. It was just easier that way.

A world without _John_ was just _easier._ Nora would carry on thinking that her soulmate was dead or maybe just a complete asshole. And, well, soon enough both would be true.

So they played the usual interrogation game. Who are you? Who sent you? Why are you here?

And Deacon played it right back at them: played dumb, played foolish, played silent, played crazy and round and round they went until, until...

Until, finally, the door slid open and a man - _aged, distinguished, in-charge_ \- walked into the room, and greeted Deacon with a single demand.

"Tell me what you know of Nora Byron."

Sure, hearing that name may have thrown him once already, but Deacon learned from his mistakes. Because Deacon was fast. Deacon was smooth. Deacon had it all under control.

He shrugged as well as he could with his arms still shackled, spitting blood on to the floor. "Nora Byron? Ain't never heard of her. Knew an Alice _Myron_ growing up. She had these big buck teeth - coulda been part rad-rabbit. Nice girl though," he said, even as he thought of Elsinore, perfect in his eyes in every way, and tucked so deep inside himself that those Institute bastards would never get to her.

Another shrug and a bit a sigh, and then, Deacon added, "Got eaten by mirelurks a few years back, real shame."

"Did she send you?" the greyed man demanded.

"What? Alice? No, I just said she got eaten by mirelurks. Weren't you listening?" Deacon turned to Alexei and rolled his eyes with a wide shake of his head. _This guy, am I right?_

The chair was cold and hard against Deacon's more delicate regions, but all things said and done, it really wasn't so bad. His eye was a bit swollen and his ribs ached when he took more than a shallow gasp, but really, truly, it could have been worse - at least they hadn't started with the red-hot poking or fingernail-pulling. Deacon crossed his legs and smiled up at the old man; he could play dumb all day, no problem at all.

 _Your move, pal._

The man replied with a pull at the corner of his lips that was definitely not a smile. "Does she know you're soulmates?"

 _Shitshitshitshitshitshit_

Deacon laughed like it was an absurdity - forced it fast and natural, like his heart hadn't just skipped a beat. "Soulmates? Hate to break it to you, buddy, but I ain't got a soulmate. I'm as Blank as they come," he gestured down at himself with a turn of his chin.

The man sighed as he came to stand over Deacon, never the sort to waste time waiting, always on some tight private schedule. Deacon might have all the time in the world, but the man did not. "I wouldn't expect a Wastelander to understand the finer points of bioresonant-entanglement, but, well..." he lifted a pen-sized device from his coat pocket, and with a push of a button, shone a cold purple light onto Deacon's forearm.

 _Elsinore Annabeth Woodhull_ glowed back, bright and brilliant upon his skin.

Deacon swallowed even as his heart fell out through his stomach. "Huh."

"Yes," the man sighed again. "'Huh', indeed."

The old man grew taller as Deacon fought the urge to shrink down into his chair, to huddle up and protect his soft underbelly now so viciously exposed.

"So, I'll ask again," said the man. "Tell me about Nora Byron."

And it was back to playing silent for Deacon.

"I said: _tell me about Nora Byron,_ " the words thick and heavy now.

And the time for games passed. Deacon swallowed back his smart reply, his cutting jab. He curled inwards, stuck out his spines, and when he spoke, it was as himself, no accent, no gravel in his vowels, just his own voice low and cold and with the memories of a man who had seen his wife die. "I've got nothing to say to you."

But the man was unimpressed by the honesty. "If you aren't willing to talk, then we'll have to bring Nora here for a conversation ourselves." He let that hang for a moment, let the threat spread out into the room and choke Deacon down. "Tell me, she's at her Sanctuary right now, yes? How many of her ... _settlers_ will we have to go through to bring her here?"

Deacon tread through the silence, fought to keep his head above it.

"Ugly business, I'm sure," the man filled the space. "Lots of civilians getting caught in the crossfire. The whole settlement will probably have to come down." He shook his head as though he might actually care for the loss, before conceding, "But a dozen Coursers should do the trick."

In his years in and around the Commonwealth, Deacon had seen evil in the face of men. He'd seen madness and desperation. But this man was something else: nothing but a cold, empty void. And the way he spoke, so even and heartless, sent a note of fear crawling up Deacon's spine.

"We'll have Mrs. Byron here in no time, one way or another."

The blood in Deacon's veins stilled, went cold, and threatened to stop his heart. Sanctuary was built more on hope than actual two-by-fours. It wouldn't take a dozen Coursers to turn it to ashes - three or four would do it. He had seen the smoldering remains of more than a few settlements that had dared stand against the Institute, and there was no doubt Sanctuary would share the same fate.

Though it made his stomach churn, it left Deacon with only one play. It was something they never talked about in the Railroad, but that every agent with more than a few missions under their belt understood. Sure, 99% of the time, you kept silent, held your tongue, took the torture, and said farewell to this cruel world clutching on to your cover. But sometimes, silence was worse. Sometimes, when you were backed in that corner, when you had weighed and measured all possible outcomes, sometimes - _just sometimes -_ when it was about far more than saving your own skin, the truth, dosed small and sparingly, was the only option.

Deacon swallowed before he spoke, his throat drying in protest at what felt like a betrayal. "She just wants her son," he said at last. "She isn't involved in any politics or whatever. She's just some lady looking for her kid." His only hope was that in telling them that small truth, in making Nora Byron just another boring wasteland sob story, they would decide she wasn't worth the effort. That they should just go ahead and shoot him, and call it a damn day already.

The man tilted his head, pleased at this new development, and nodded. "And you are?"

Deacon struggled for a moment before admitting the truth he hadn't spoken in years. "John."

"John ...?"

"Just John." Just another worthless piece of Commonwealth trash.

And with that admission, the man almost smiled. "Well, _John,_ let's try again: did Nora Byron send you?"

Deacon squeezed the words up into his throat, forced them out before he choked on their taste of treason "... no."

"So how is it that you came to be here then?"

And the silence stretched again.

"She built the relay that you came through and yet, you say she didn't send you," said the man. He towered now, a man well past sixty, withering and grey but somehow more frightening than the trio of Coursers. "We've already closed the radio signal, _John_. It was only every meant to guide one woman through. There's no point hanging on to whatever secrets you seem to think you're guarding."

He was right. God help him, he was right.

"Again: Nora Byron didn't send you, so you...?"

"Snuck in," Deacon mumbled. "Took her spot."

That earned an accepting " _hmm_ ", and maybe, just maybe, a few moments of reprieve for Deacon to gather his thoughts.

Or maybe not.

"So tell me, _John_ , why did you have your mark removed?"

The turn in topics came fast and unexpected, striking at Deacon's carefully revealed truths. When Deacon hesitated, the man continued. "John, if we can't have a nice, honest discussion, I really am afraid that I'll have to have this conversation with Mrs. Byron instead."

Pennies and pounds, out and through, it was all collapsing in on Deacon now. "Met someone else years ago. She didn't like seeing another name on me." It was all true, if not honest. In a Wasteland where finding a mate was rarity, it was a common enough story to believe.

"And Nora? Why didn't you tell her about the mark?"

A silence and then the same unspoken threat echoed between the pair, before, "She deserves better."

It was the most honest thing Deacon had said in years.

* * *

Just a few miles away, Nora stood at the centre of the settlement she had built from the ground up, and tried her damnest not to break into tears.

Nora. Not General Bryon. Not Agent Wanderer. Just Nora. Just a woman, filled with heartbreak and betrayal.

She shouted as she kicked at the lump of scorched metal. It wouldn't matter if they managed to fix the teleporter - or even if they rebuilt the whole damn thing from scratch - the signal was gone now. The Institute had undoubtedly patched that little security breach the moment Deacon had gone through.

Deacon, her mentor.

Deacon, her friend.

Deacon, the traitor.

He was gone and he had taken her one chance of ever seeing her son again with him.

The bastard.

The asshole.

The _absolute_ fucker.

The ... the...

"We'll figure something out, General," Preston tried to console her, but something in his voice, his eyes, just didn't sit quite right. His sympathies hung just a little too hollow.

Sturges was inconsolable with his guilt, apologizing again and again for being caught off guard. Nora had embraced him, held him close and promised that it wasn't his fault, that she didn't blame him. No one had seen Deacon's betrayal coming - least of all her.

Smoke still rose in twisting coils from the wreckage, stinging at the corners of Nora's eyes. As she stood there, trying to breathe through the knowledge that her son might be lost forever, she wondered if Preston would believe the tears she fought were brought on by the smoke alone.

A voice from behind startled her from her thoughts. "Ma'am?"

As Nora and Preston turned to address the newcomer behind them, they both considered who he might be. Perhaps a local farmer or some new trader. Maybe even a fresh new Minuteman, just recently joined up. Neither could have an anticipated that it would be a Courser standing there, having so very easily breached the heart of their Sanctuary.

The General and her Colonel staggered back, even as they drew their weapons upon the synth.

The Courser stood, arms crossed behind his back, confident, steady, at ease. "Mrs. Byron?" he addressed her as though their guns weren't trained on him. "I can take you to the Institute."

Nora gave a sharp shake to her head as though to knock loose the wool that must have gathered there. " _What?!"_

"You wish to enter the Institute," the Courser clarified. "I can take you there now." At her hesitation, he added, "You will not be harmed. The Director has given his word on this."

Her pistol shook in her hands, but the Courser remained concrete-steady.

A flicker of movement at the corner of her vision found a half dozen more Coursers waiting at the tree line. And the truth became obvious: they were fucked. If the Coursers wanted them dead, they would already be dead. If they wanted their supplies and their pathetic cache of collected tech, the Coursers would just take it. They would take down the settlers with such a disgusting ease that the thought sent bile bubbling up into Nora's throat.

To her side, her second-in-command recognized her distant stare. "General, no," Preston begged.

There had been foolish moments in Nora's life: the day as a young girl that she had tried to take the big jump on her bicycle and lost her front tooth in the process, the night in college she chose to go to a freshman's kegger instead of studying for her Poli-Sci midterm the next morning, that time she slept with Nate and shrugged off his lack of condom with a "what-are-the-chances" bravado.

And now there would be this.

Nora turned to Preston, holstering her gun. "I don't have a choice." She took a stumbling step towards the Courser.

"Please, Nora, don't do this," Preston called to her.

The Courser held out his hand and, god help her, Nora took it.

* * *

Some hours later Deacon found himself somehow _still_ very much alive, cuffed to a new chair, in a new white cell, and bored out of his mind.

On the scale of 1 to Torture, it really wasn't so bad at all. After a while, the greyed man had departed without so much as a farewell, and then Deacon had been shackled and drug off to a new cell. He'd been scrubbed clean and dressed in a shockingly white smock, though without his sunglasses he still felt naked and exposed. They'd even Stimpaked him, leaving his bruises fading fast.

He couldn't be certain how much time had passed (he'd asked his best pal Alexei the time and received no reply) but from the drain, the fatigue of hours and days without rest, Deacon was sure they had passed into an artificial evening or beyond.

He was counting ceiling tiles when the door to his cell opened and Nora stumbled into the room. Deacon's heart stood still.

She steadied herself and then stood awkwardly just inside the door, a pair of Coursers looking in behind her. She wasn't cuffed or otherwise subdued. Apparently, for whatever reasons he couldn't even begin to imagine, she was a guest here.

Before he could stop himself, Deacon drank her in. In her rose-coloured dress, clean and unmarred by the wasteland, she looked as though she had just stepped out of pre-war billboard. Her skin was bright and clean, her hair curled and sprayed into a coif that threatened put the Super Salon out of business.

Luxury suited her.

Deacon dropped his gaze, set it to lock on the relative safety of the door frame behind her, before he gave it all away. Okay, so they were soulmates, the Institute had that. But that didn't have to mean much. They could still stem the tide, stop the bleeding, keep something of themselves hidden. So Deacon fixed hard on that cold metal doorframe and, and - _trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking* -_ it didn't matter. His eyes met hers and she burned through him.

"Hello, John." She broke the silence, her voice measured.

Well, at least that answered whether they'd told her about the mark or not. "Hey Elsie," he winked at her. "You clean up nice, pal."

She put on a brave front, but Deacon could see the cracks through it: the slight twitch in her left eye, the restrained quiver of her bottom lip.

"You like 'Elsie'?" he asked. "Maybe 'Ellie' instead? But that might get you confused with Perkins ... maybe 'Elsa'? 'Elle'? Nah, 'Elsie' is -"

She took three fast steps across the room and slapped him across the cheek.

It stung, but damn, Deacon knew he deserved it and worse. He shook it off, and looked up to meet her gaze, unobscured by his sunglasses and open and _vulnerable_.

"You stupid bastard," she hissed.

There were a thousand things he should say, apologies and explanations that would take a lifetime to get through. He should say that he never wanted to lie to her, never wanted to hurt her. That he only did what he did to protect her. That he was trash and she deserved so much better. That he loved her so much it hurt. "I'm sorry," was all he could manage.

"You damn well should be."

And then her arms were around him, and before he could react, before he could breathe, she was kissing him fast and frantic, her lips pressing an urgent admonishment against his own.

She was fury. She was fire. She fell into a straddle across his lap and breathed life back into him.

 _Oh god. Oh god._

This was it. The moment Deacon had waited half his life for. His actual, honest to god above, _soulmate_ was in his lap, clutching at him like he was the last raft in a barren sea.

They were a mile underground, at the very heart of the Institute's hive, completely and utterly trapped, and yet, and yet, for the briefest moments, none of that mattered. There was nothing but John and Elisnore: the fool and the woman kissing him like they were on the cover of a dime romance. Her lips soft and insistent against his own, her fingers traveling up the back of his neck, searching to thread through thick strands that weren't there.

Deacon pulled against the cuffs binding his forearms down to the chair, his hands reaching to pull her in against him, to hold fast to what couldn't possibly be real. When the shackles held, his fingertips contented themselves with twisting into the pale fabric of her skirt.

They were screwed, and yet all that seemed to matter was the way that she bit at his bottom lip, the way she curled her tongue against his own as she drank him in, drank him down.

" _Ahem_ ," an awkward cough interrupted the thought.

And just as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

They pulled apart. Nora was off his lap and stood back upon the floor before Deacon managed to blink the haze from his eyes. Her lipstick was smeared and some of her carefully pinned curls had fallen away, and she was completely and utterly perfect in every way.

"Mrs. Byron," a Courser in the doorway- a new one, not one for Deacon's Karamazov pals - began. "If you would come with me, please. Father is waiting."

Nora ran her hands over her skirt, smoothing down the wrinkled fabric like she hadn't just tasted some part of his soul. "Right, of course." One step towards the door, and then she paused, glancing back at Deacon. "Can my, umm, friend come too, please?"

"I'm afraid not, ma'am. Your _associate_ is to remain here for now."

 _Nice try, pal._ "Could you at least uncuff him? He's no threat at all." She flashed the synth that sweet dazzling smile that Deacon had seen crack the coldest settlers and shrewdest merchants more than a few times. "Please?"

"He will be quite safe here, ma'am," the synth replied in a _definite_ tone.

 _Hmm._ Deacon added Coursers to the `Nora-Immune' column.

As she stood frozen at the centre of the room, called away but desperate to stay, Deacon's training took over. He set the play and sent it spinning in motion. "One for the road, Sweetcheeks?" he asked with his suavest smile.

Anyone else would have flashed him an odd glance in reply. Anyone else would have cocked their head and dropped their jaw and ruined the whole damn thing.

But this was Wanda. The best. The brightest. Deacon's other, better, half.

She was back to his side in a heartbeat, no hesitation, no hint that she knew this was all part of some ploy. When she bent down to meet him, Deacon turned as though to kiss her cheek, nuzzle against her ear, but instead, spoke low in whisper.

"Run," he warned her. "You get a chance, you run. Don't look back."

And then, maybe, there came the inexperience. She paused for just a moment too long, hesitated for that slightest sliver of a second before recovering. She pulled back to meet his gaze and Deacon knew now more than ever, that he was doomed; she held his heart, his soul, in her hand. She pressed a final kiss to his forehead - sweet and gentle, and with a touch that made Deacon yearn for something _more_ that he'd ever known - and then she turned and walked away.

Deacon watched his soulmate go, uncertain if he was more afraid that she, would or would not, return.

* * *

Will Deacon escape? What is the Father's plan? Why is Elsie in a circle dress? Find out next time on: _Deacon and Nora (Drink and) Talk About Sad Things Together._

*Quote from _Anna Karenina_ by Leo Tolstoy


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